Generation Y Can't We Have It All

A new study confirms what those of us in an older demographic have known for a while—the group known as Generation Y is truly more narcissistic and entitled than Generation X or the Baby Boom.

Shocking, yes, we know.

"They want everything," Stacy Campbell, the co-author of the study that's set to be published in September in the Journal of Management. Campbell spoke with the New York Post, which published a story about the study today. "The want the time off. They want the big bucks."

We all want time off and big bucks. And many of us have watched young workers come in with demands and have witnessed employers seemingly bend over backwards for them (especially before the economy tanked).

But why do they act the way they do? Here's an answer from Campbell's co-author, Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire management professor.

The answer, he thinks, can be found in a reworking of the children’s song “Frere Jacques” that he once heard elementary-school students sing. Instead of braying the original French chorus, the kids instead sang, “I am special/I am special.”

Entitlement “gets ingrained in the formative years,” says Harvey. “It stems from the self-esteem movement, telling kids, ‘You’re great, you’re special,’” he says.

Echoing the findings in Twenge’s “Generation Me,” Harvey says the “ultimate irony” of jamming unwarranted notions of self-worth into youngsters like corn down a goose’s throat is that it has the unintended effect of higher rates of depression in Gen Y.

“You see high levels of disappointment,” he notes, adding that unwarranted self-esteem acts as a shield until the ugly truth intrudes.

Ah, the ugly truth. It happens to all of us. Back in my day, they called it a growing experience.