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It is not–I can’t emphasize this enough–that we don’t have it good. Far from it. If anything, kids today are struggling under the burden of too much pampering. According to Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University who has conducted detailed research into the attitudes of young adults now and in the past, there has been a sharp rise in self-esteem since the 1980s. The younger generation considers itself smarter, more responsible, and more attractive than ever. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special,’” explains Twenge.29 We’ve been brought up on a steady diet of narcissism, but as soon as we’re released into the great big world of unlimited opportunity, more and more of us crash and burn. The world, it turns out, is cold and harsh, rife with competition and unemployment. It’s not a Disneyland where you can wish upon a star and see all your dreams come true, but a rat race in which you have no one but yourself to blame if you don’t make the grade. Not surprisingly, that narcissism conceals an ocean of uncertainty. Twenge also discovered that we have all become a lot more fearful over the last decades. Comparing 269 studies conducted between 1952 and 1993, she concluded that the average child living in early 1990s North America was more anxious than psychiatric patients in the early 1950s.30 According to the World Health Organization, depression has even become the biggest health problem among teens and will be the number-one cause of illness worldwide by 2030.31
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