Look at me!

And so the battle wages on: What kind of generation are we, and who gets to decide? \nApparently, the New York Times decides. Earlier this year the paper held an essay contest for college students, who responded to the question, “What defines our generation?” The winner, a Yale student, dubbed the college-aged population “The Posteverything Generation” for its alleged “postmodern” lack of an “overarching narrative” to the story of our generation. Thomas Friedman, an NYT columnist, called us “Generation Q – the Quiet Americans” for our lackluster social activism. \nThe most recent testament to the paper’s preoccupation with naming our generation comes in last week’s article “Generation Me vs. You Revisited.” According to the article, which is accompanied by a neoclassical painting of Narcissus gazing at himself in a pool, some psychologists believe our generation is marked by particularly high levels of self-obsession and narcissism. Oh, and these psychologists have scientific proof.\nThrough quizzes like “The Narcissist Personality Inventory” and other survey material, social scientists and the Pew Research Center have come up with an unflattering characterization of us young people as the “Look At Me” generation.\nThe cultural landscape floating through the brains of all these social scientists must look like an information age-induced apocalypse: reality television starring self-centered, self-righteous young hotties vying for 15 minutes of fame; the outrageously successful, self-glorifying social networking Web sites that advertise mottos that inviting you to have it your way, blah blah blah. It all boils down to a formula:\nPreconceived and unfair notions about youths being egomaniacs, plus cultural shifts in technology that are overwhelming, equals a theory that disparages young people to explain overwhelming cultural phenomena. \nEnough already! It’s not just young people who are tapped into the narcissism encouraged by TV, the Internet and advertising: it’s old people, children, baby boomers and everyone in between. To call our generation the “Look At Me” generation is to displace a cultural moment onto the people who just happen to be growing up in it.\nWe’re not saying our generation doesn’t participate in the narcissist frenzy; how can we resist? We only point out that it isn’t just us who have come to feed at the table of hyper aware self-absorption.\nFurthermore, naming generations is a risky and uncertain enterprise. Remember the “slacker generation”? These same people went on to create the Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s; we are still reeling from the technology the “slackers” unleashed upon the world.\nIt is difficult to weave a theory incorporating all the tastes and trends of a generation. The very concept “generation” is a rather nebulous grouping of people based on an assumption of shared experience. \nSure, we’re all participating in the “communication” or “information” age (or whatever you want to call it). But if anything, the proliferation of all this bewildering technology has allowed us to retreat from a united culture into a reality of our own choosing. \nFor every theory, there are a thousand refutations. So to all you social scientists: Stop the youth bashing, and get a Facebook account. You’ll feel better about yourselves