Sunrise, sunset (from the Facebook album “Spring Break”).

“Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than ever,” declared a recent CNN headline, announcing the findings of a study conducted by Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and four other psychologists.

Twenge is, of course, right &mdash college students are conceited! A brief foray into Facebook is proof enough: My News Feed was a flurry of post-spring break activity all weekend as Penn students returned to their laptops. They couldn’t get their “SB ‘07″ albums up fast enough &mdash overexposed photos of nicely tanned bare chests and midriffs,against a backdrop of palm trees and white-sand beaches, brown faces with white smiles peering into the turquoise waters. The cream of the crop was reserved for facebook profile pics, after being Photoshopped to perfection.

Interestingly enough, many have reacted to Twenge’s study in defense of college students. In a Chronicle of Higher Education article, author William Strauss calls Twenge’s depictions “harsh, unfair, and unsupported by the data.” Well, we appreciate the thought &mdash but, who are you kidding?

College students are more self-absorbed than any other age cohort. And Penn arrogance, in particular, is unparalleled–after all, words like modesty and selflessness just don’t fall under the Wharton job description.

Can you really blame us? We’re on top of the world! We’re young. We’re single. We really only have ourselves to look out for. And we still believe our parents who told us we’re special and our elementary school teachers who told us to “reach for the stars.”

But I wouldn’t go as far as W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, who worked on Twenge’s study. He fears that “narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others.”

Rest assured, Professor Campbell, we’ll wake up from our delusions of Facebook fame soon enough. Soon enough, we’ll be faced with the harsh realities of the real world. Soon enough, those happy hour calories will catch up with us, and we won’t be quite so eager to bare our midriffs. Soon enough, we’ll be back at the bottom, groveling our way up the career ladder. Soon enough, we’ll have families of our own, and we’ll realize that it’s not all about us.

We’ll learn soon enough. So, please, let us enjoy the spotlight while we can.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.