@copperbadge I have too low spoons to actually discuss this in quite the depth that I’d like, but:
First off, you’re not wrong about marketing being inherently more personalized, individualized, and aimed at playing up personal satisfaction/pleasure/individualistic expression these days; (Dr?) Jean Twenge is a psychologist who’s literally studied this whole phenomenon (I don’t have the spoons to read the article you linked but would be utterly unsurprised if she were mentioned in it!), and she absolutely has observed and noted that increase in that marketing style happened and continues to happen right along with the “self-esteem” movement’s three generations (Gen X, Y and Z) growing up over time.
But also, the SAME movement, because of the following elements:
- getting the correlation between success and self-esteem literally backwards (tldr people who DO better, happen to feel better about themselves; they don’t just….do well BECAUSE they feel better about themselves?? I mean, granted, it’s actually a little more complicated than that - depression and anxiety and self-consciousness all negatively influence all kinds of performance - but like…literally, the overall “high self esteem correlates with success” effect itself happens because success often causes higher self-esteem, not the other way around)
- conflating “low” self-esteem with “bad” self-esteem (tldr: self-esteem is literally the regard you hold yourself in. INFLATED self esteem is no healthier - albeit for different reasons - than the overly-negative self-esteem that comes from anxiety and depression. The real trick is to not have UNREALISTIC expectations/esteem for yourself. It’s to to accept yourself as flawed and human, but NOT worthless, which is…very literally NOT the same as “high” self-esteem, because the literal highest self-esteem is found in narcissists)
- having no good goddamn idea of how to “create” healthier self-esteem in a functioning person (newsflash: stop telling kids they’re doing well in school and such because they’re “smart”! Praise them for their ACTUAL EFFORT/RESULTS, not some potentially ~inherent~ trait that could cause good results…or else you get kids who the moment something starts being hard, wonder if they’re “not smart enough” for it, thinking there is something innately Wrong and Defective in them, instead of, you know, telling themselves: “wow, this is a little harder for me, guess I have to put in more effort”)
….basically was, combined with shit hitting the fan in our culture/economy, probably a large part of the reason for increases in everything from mass shootings, to Gen Y and Z’s disturbingly high depression and anxiety rates.
No, really. She actually makes good arguments for things like the increase in mass shootings being probably exacerbated by the “self-esteem” movement’s results, and pretty much literally predicted that many of the kids raised by the Self-Esteem Focused movement would just have emotional breakdowns at some point.
aaaand I’d love to think Twenge was exaggerating or playing it up, that it isn’t REALLY that bad, because saying things that amount to “our entire culture is literally getting more narcissistic, because we’re shit at understanding what a healthy attitude is, which is going to blow up in our faces because the more narcissistic you are the less you can handle things like failure or rejection in a healthy way, and not only is this bad for individuals, having a whole society largely suffering from that is even worse”…sounds like doom and gloom “kids these days!!!” hyperbole
But a.) Twenge is herself part of Gen X, aka the oldest part of the “Generation Me” cohort, so she’s literally including her own life and experiences and her own friends/family in that theory and
b.) honestly, on a personal note, as a “gifted” kid who was always told she was “smart” but who had her literally-diagnosed-by-a-professional neurological disability downplayed by her parents for YEARS? Which fucked her up in the anxiety and depression area because of having to GASP, REALIZE THAT HUMAN BEINGS HAVE LIMIIIIITS?
Ouch.
I see it. I definitely see it. She’s probably not wrong, at least broadly speaking :P
anyway tldr for my post: Yeah, you’re onto something, but also -
If you’re interested in this phenomenon (and the complexities of developmental psychology, sociology, etc. in general), you might want to check out Jean Twenge’s work, specifically the books “Generation Me” and “The Narcissism Epidemic”, both of which discuss how the “self-esteem” movement, particularly in parenting and education but also reinforced by things like marketing trends and the 24 hour news cycle, has all affected our culture.
And… you know, because I don’t want to overly depress people, It’s not all negative: let’s end this post on a hopeful note!
Twenge also has noted that, despite our flaws, we’re the three most tolerant and socially progressive generations yet; that for all that the parenting etc methods may have otherwise fucked us up, there’s both an increase in community service and volunteer work in our generations (owing to having been taught we can and should Make a Difference), and an increased acceptance of people who’re Different from the traditional privileged “norm” (because “hey, individuality and uniqueness is great!!!”) - including for example, LGBTQ+ people and POC. It’s definitely no coincidence that a lot of civil rights gains (especially women’s rights and LGBT+ rights) have been made in the last 30 years or so.
We may have fucked up mental health and perceptions in a lot of other ways, in other words, we’re certainly not perfect - but we’re also, on the whole, less sexist, racist, and heterosexist, than the Boomers or older are/were. And there’s evidence to suggest that that is an increasing and consistent trend, not a fluke.
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