Psychology Today Magazine lists examples of entitlement displayed by today’s youth and suggests ways to overcome them. A study in New Hampshire finds young people scored on their issues of entitlement come in 25% higher than their Gen X elders, and more than twice as high as their Baby Boom grandparents.
“You may feel inside you’re a wonderful, loveable, highly accomplished person, but just because you feel that about yourself imposes no expectation others will feel that way about you,” Dr. Keith Parsons, a philosophy professor at the University of Houston Clear Lake counsels his college students. Dr. Joshua Grubbs, the New Hampshire study’s author, says the narcissism of these entitled young people leads of a life of depression, frustrations and disappointment.
“It is a hard, cold, cruel world in many ways, which will judge you not by your perception of yourself, but by what you can do for other people. That is a difficult lesson to learn,” says Dr. Parsons. But he points out, millennials and iGen don’t necessarily have exclusive claim to the attitudes some attribute to today’s entitled youth. Psychology Today lists, among the qualities of their narcissism, a disregard of rules, freeloading, causing inconveniences, and being likely to assume the role of leadership when working within groups, which is what was said of baby boomers in the 1960’s.