Nearly 60 percent of college students polled by San Diego State University agreed their age group uses social networking sites for narcissistic, self-promoting and attention-seeking reasons, it was announced today.
The poll also found that two-thirds of the respondents agreed their generation is more self-promoting, narcissistic, over-confident and attention-seeking than previous generations, according to SDSU.
The poll of 1,068 college students nationwide was conducted by Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at SDSU, and Youth Pulse LLC.
"College students have clearly noticed the more self-centered traits of their peers -- it's fascinating how honest they are about diagnosing their generation's downsides," Twenge said.
"And students are right about the influence of social networking sites -- research has shown that narcissistic people thrive on sites like Facebook, where self-centered people have more friends and post more attractive pictures of themselves."
Ninety-two percent of students who took the poll said they use MySpace or Facebook regularly, and 84 percent said they go online several times each day.
