The Perils of Do-It-Yourself CeWebrity at The Tyee looks at the up side and down side to social networking and the technology that makes it happen.

Jean Twenge, one of the researchers in the narcissism study and the author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before, blames the “self-esteem movement” that began in the early 1980s.

Since being born, Millennials have grown up being told they’re “special,” she says. And it’s no coincidence that the “I’m special” paradigm coincides with an explosion of DIY celebrities in cyberspace. But the role of technology in facilitating narcissism — especially egocentric online communities like MySpace and Facebook — is controversial among academics.

For example, Dr. Del Paulhus, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, says that although Twenge is generating a lot of buzz by arguing that Millennials are more narcissistic, he doesn’t see the trend emerging in his studies. He studies narcissism, or what he calls self-absorption, which is narcissism to the point a person thinks he or she is more entitled than others.

“In fact, it seems to me that there is some movement back to caring about the world, which would be inversely connected to narcissism,” he says. “There are a lot of aspects to the Internet, and looking at yourself is a miniscule part of that. You are a thousand times more in touch with information and others than people in the 1960s were. So you should be much more out in the world than focusing on yourself.”

narcissism: Excessive love or admiration of oneself

solipsism: The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.  The theory or view that the self is the only reality

connection: A circle of friends or associates or a member of such a circle