Social Media Has Made Us Narcissists — But There Is a Fix

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. step to your routine? Try daily microfoliant from Dermalogica. This exfoliating powder activates with water to gently polish away dull, flaky skin, leaving it feeling smoother and looking braider. It's gentle enough to use every day, so keeping your skin looking healthy and fresh is easy. Ready to see the difference? Visit Dermalogica.com and use code SMOOTH at CART for an exclusive gift with your $65 purchase. Are you a narcissist? Here's a quick self-assessment so that you can find out. This is based on some of the questions that are typically used in research to evaluate or assess non-clinical narcissism.

1:10Number one, I love being the center of attention. Two, I would rather be rich and famous than a good person. Three, I'm often jealous of other people's success. Four, I'm easily annoyed when others criticize me. Five, people who know me appreciate my talents. Six, 6 I view myself more favorably than others do. 7 I like to surround myself with people who admire me. 8 I crave other people's approval. 9 I am destined for greatness. 10 I find it hard to fake humility. 10 is the best. You add one point for every statement that you agree with. If you score between 0 and 3, you're probably a cultural outlier.

1:56the last humble person on earth in today's narcissistic kind of age. If you're between four and six you're probably average which may sound like an insult. The worst thing you can tell somebody who is very narcissistic is that they're average but in general this is a good thing and if you're between seven and ten then you really probably are the perfect customer for social media platforms and a cultural emblem or referent for the AI age. Narcissism is a personality trait usually considered part of the dark side of personality. It's characterized by overconfidence, an unrealistic and deluded sense of self-worth or an ego that is detached from actual and real achievements.

2:44Narcissism can be a bit of a double-edged sword. So on the one hand, it makes you antisocial. On the other hand, it can lead to other people thinking that you are talented even when you're not and overestimating your skills and achievements. Digital narcissism is a manifestation of narcissism. Most if not all of these platforms, especially social media platforms, they have incentivized us to behave in ways that would generally be considered pretty obnoxious and undesirable in the analog world. If you spend all day talking about yourself, promoting yourself, wanting to be the center of attention, and ignoring others and not listening to others, you probably won't be seen as a very nice and likable colleague.

3:31But if you're not doing all these things online, your social media status and rank goes down. All of these platforms are actually feeding into our narcissistic tendencies, and they have made the average person today far more narcissistic than the average person 20 or 50 years ago. The desire for fame and something that psychologists call the need for uniqueness, we wouldn't have cathedrals or operas and, you know, great buildings or any manifestation of culture, including science, if it weren't for people's desire to prove themselves to others and achieve a certain level of success and fame. But when our admiration for people who are famous is diluted to being famous just for the sake of being famous, then I think we have a problem.

4:22There's some really nice longitudinal studies that show that in the 1920s, only 20 or 25 % of young people aspired to being famous. And that then increased to about 50 % in the 80s, and that is now close to 80%. If you have a population really expecting their lives and careers to end up in Kanye West or Kim Kardashian-like fame, there's going to be a lot of people who end up either disappointed or just completely detached from reality. And I think today, especially if we're looking at... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new.

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5:38It's gentle enough to use every day, so keeping your skin looking healthy and fresh is easy. Ready to see the difference? Visit Dermalogica.com and use code SMOOTH at CART for an exclusive gift with your$65 purchase. TikTok and the rise of TikTok influencers who achieve a lot of fame, often without really adhering to old school parameters of talents, skills or accomplishments is just a replication or the perpetuation of the Kim Kardashianization of success. The paradox with narcissism is that the highs that you get from getting other people's approval comes at the expense of cost in the long term.

6:23You become so dependent on what other people think of you that you're actually ending up very, very neurotic and very insecure. This really creates a casino-like effect. It creates a short high, maybe a dopamine kind of reinforcement that makes us feel good about ourselves. But in the long term, it makes us very dependent on that. Much like in the casino, the longer you keep playing, the more likely it is that you lose. Quite frankly, there has never been a better time to rediscover the value of humility. the ability to be aware of your limitations. Humble people are more able to listen to others, they are more able to stay quiet when they have nothing to say, and they also have the ability to be self-critical and to understand that they are not as good as they want to be or as they should be.

7:15If you are capable of identifying a gap between the skills or the abilities you have and the ones you want to have, that's a great opportunity to get better. If you want to lose weight, it helps to understand what your weight is. If you want to have a healthier lifestyle, it helps to understand how healthy or unhealthy you are. And with that comes the ability to de-risk. And if I know that I am actually not very well prepared for a job interview or for a client presentation, well, you know, I wouldn't go into that job interview or client presentation ill-prepared. I spend a lot of time working with leaders and the great leaders are different from other leaders.

7:57They're able to understand their limitations. They don't believe their own hype and that enables them to actually continue to get better. Everybody can become more humble or harness a reputation for being humble. It starts with spending less time online and less time on these very toxic and narcissistic environments. but partly also finding alternative ways of being and relating to others in the analog or offline world. I mean, it really helps to surround yourself with people who can help you become more self-critical. It helps to work with people, colleagues or managers or your teammates who actually provide you with a little bit of constructive, negative, critical feedback.

8:43it helps to change the way we ask or request feedback from others. Instead of asking people, wasn't I great or wasn't this amazing? You could ask them, what would you have done differently or what are the two things that you didn't like about my presentation, my assignment, my performance, etc. It's not very pleasant to realize that things aren't great, especially with you, with your skills, with your achievements, but that's really what distinguishes high achievers from the rest. If we live in a world where everybody is self-obsessed and everybody is self-promoting, your humility will pay off even more because you'll stand out and you'll shine, especially because everybody else is so focused on themselves.

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