why is our current generation of youth so insecure?

Oftentimes, our generation is engulfed with the overwhelming sneers and downgrading assertions of our presence of narcissism. The youth, those outstretching their route to adulthood, and those etching their premature embark within the journey of existence are awarded with being established as the most useless generation, the most self-centered one, and ticked with the designation of being the “digital natives.” As a society, those occupying the aged generations, within a recurring interval, sniggers that technology, indulgence of social media, and inhabiting solely digital environments are supplying us with an exorbitant view of self. However, this solitary perspective diverts far from the factual candor; an excessive majority of us are ceasing the yawning sentiment that we possess more than one another, acquire more superior attributes than someone, or in its plain essence, is generally better than an individual at something or at being someone.

If you could obtain the superpowered attribute to plow deep into the minds of people surrounding you, even those who have developed and masked themselves as a highly confident person, an overly self-absorbed individual, and even those who are pronounced as “the narcissistic one”, there is a probable chance you’ll approach the continual ripples of insecurity. According to the authors of the following research conducted in the year 2016, entitled “Separating Narcissism From Self-Esteem.” In the presence of narcissism, it departs from being an “extreme manifestation of high self-esteem” (Brummelman, Thomaes, & Sedikides, 2016). In contrast, the person grasping onto their appearance of towering self-esteem perceives themselves as possessing a high estimate of value and worth, whereas the person grappling onto their unveiled appearance of narcissism perceives themselves as possessing a high estimate of self-centeredness and a stance of superiority.

In an additional research study conducted by the family-dynamic relationship of father-and-daughter psychologists, Drs. Robert and Lisa Firestone developed and utilized the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) to evaluate and assist in ascertaining the extent of an individual’s suicidal intentions, or in a simpler wording, people’s self-destructive trashes (“critical inner voices”) paving across a perennial. The successive conclusions produced revealed that the self-critical thought held by most people is that they are dissimilar – not in an affirmative awareness, but in a certain permissive, alienating perspective. Whether our self-esteem is asserted as soaring the crests upon mountains or descending the rumpling heels of a flight of stairs, one objective perch itself clear; our generation of youth is a generation that rests continuously upon comparison, evaluation, and judgment of ourselves. Yet, when greater understanding as to where this perspective of insecurity arises from, why we are thoroughly determined in tugging ourselves down the lofty flight of stairs and how this perspective affects us, and essentially affects those around us as well, we can embark onto the journey of challenging, combating, and overcoming the antagonistic inner critic swarming our heads and limiting our worth within life.

From being pounced upon with deplorable sneers and ignominious jeers entailing our contemporary generation of youth as “snowflakes” to being indicted of hierarchizing purchasing avocados over homes, and grasping firmly upon a discrete anticipation of more or “too much” from the brands and companies we formulate interactions with on a habitual basis, as aged generations oversees arising generations and witness their evolving nature and burgeoning attributes, the younger generations are routinely illustrated as agelessly defamed as an somehow infirm, less laborious or less adaptable to alterations than their elderly counterparts. Nonetheless, this phenomenon is devoid of being propped as an anew concept; above all, the aged-old utterance of condemnation notching its dawn with ‘kids these days’ has been utilized for decades. However, does any verifiable candor emerge within the notion that millennials, Generation Z, and the uprising generation, Generation Alpha, are weaker than its senior generations, namely Generation X and Baby Boomers?

A lenient amount of evidence suggests that newer generations measure a heightened estimate on attributes that their older counterparts might perceive as a profound signal of individualized frailty. Notwithstanding, experts also have estimated that Baby Boomers (a classification of individuals born roughly between the years 1946 and 1964.) and Generation X (a classification of individuals born between 1965 and 1980) have possessed a widened possibility of planting their verdicts of the generations that have succeeded them in a more stern manner, and perceiving them against the orbs of standards that have halted to be established as the “norm” of a societal globe of personas.

An increased supply of context within the topic of generations and their differing beliefs could be significant in diminishing divisions between decades – although, the procedure of peering down upon a horde of young children, adolescents, and adults is declared to be an unfeasible event to undo since its resting as a long-established and innate instinct. According to myriads of research conducted exploring the materializations of recurring defamations younger generations are obliged to sustain from their older counterparts, younger generations, namely Generation Z, are viewed as impulsive consumers of exorbitant clothing and digitized technology, thin-skinned, overly sensitive “crybabies”, and a flock of headlonged attention-seekers.

As thousands upon millions of years drift astray, condemnation swarming the environments, mindsets, and beliefs of younger generations have been generated and exerted upon each emerging generation of youth. In frank terms, the process of looking down upon the generation that trails after you has been viewed by some as an instinctive rejoinder to human nature. According to a professor of management at Queensland Institute of Technology in the regions of Australia, Peter O’Connor, “The tendency for adults to disparage the character of youth has been happening for centuries.”

Additionally, Peter O’Connor etches out that the stereotype abides in a vigorous, agile manner, with countless written fragments of research depicting thousands of Americans that still resides under the postulation that ‘kids these days’ possesses a deficiency of affirmative, efficacious attributes that participants equate with older generations. Yet, with the researchers evidently acknowledging that our current group of youths today happened to lack these attributes – the researchers asserted that this was due to our ceaseless projection of our contemporary selves onto our former selves. As proceeding with doing so, elder people are often likening their current self-perspective to our current society of youth, exerting an impression that contemporary youth is somehow facing an intensive ripple of decline within their lone effectuation of succession in society, regardless of the decade we are existing in.

Yours Truly,

Dear Youth Global,

Sanyia Myh'Dhanaeh