Narcissism, self-assessment, and external feedback

[mrissa]

Last week the Strib had an article about teenagers-mostly girls ages 13 to 15-posting painfully sincere selfies and videos asking the internet to tell them the truth about whether they are ugly. And most of this article was about the effects on the kids in question, but there was some of the usual hand-wringing about how supposedly narcissistic

Comments

[sartorias]

Well said about young groups. Good grief, how many letters and diaries have a read in which young people examined themselves in mirrors endlessly?

[mrissa]

Right, exactly. All these people who are like, "OMG this means young people today are SO NARCISSISTIC": I looked at that and thought, right, like you didn't worry about (someday) attracting people of your desired sex(es) when you were 13, jerkface.

Not that I am judgy of these jerkface people who are jerkfaces. But really, you set yourself up against 13-year-olds as a group and I usually know whose side I'm on.

[sartorias]

A-double-men.

Cut the kids a break, for goodness sake. The hormones are kicking in, the brain is going through big changes, including the first inklings of pulling away from home, and kids want to see where they fit in the world. They also want to be liked, and admired, and who doesn't? I had a great aunt who lied about her age increasingly as she got old, until one time my grandmother complained that Harriet, who had married when my grandmother was a kid, was suddenly claiming to be younger than she was! (Both were in their nineties!)

I also think that kids' selfies are adorable.

[mrissa]

I found myself explaining last week, "I am trying to make the face that B. makes in [particular kind of selfie]." Because she has so much fun in them.

[supergee]

And the music they listen to is just noise.

[mrissa]

Also their clothes look funny, not like when I was their age and clothes looked cool.

[swan_tower]

People who grew up in the Regency and were complaining circa 1840 get a pass on that one, because they're right: clothes did look better back in their day. :-P