It leaves the youth of today feeling isolated, feeling the need to focus on the "self" rather than on "society". It can make a teenager feel alone, if no one is like me, than no one can understand what I am going through. When in reality most all of us have been through despair, jubilation, and everything in between. We all understand human emotion; we just express it in different ways.

On a personal basis, we are told no one in the world is like us; we are unique, and important. That is a lot of pressure, there is only one me? It has made us a society of individuals rather than just a society.

This individualistic view has inflated the reality of our differences. It has inflated the importance of our selves. I have begun reading the book, "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement", and it confirms what I have been discussing for years with others. Because we have isolated ourselves with our differences it makes us feel that we need to fight for what we want, and to hell with the rest of society, our partners, our children, everyone but ourselves.

It has made us, well, bluntly put, selfish. Cosmetic surgeries are on the rise, along with divorce. People take thousands of the same pictures of themselves for social networking sites. As the book states, Paris Hilton even has a poster of herself in her own living room. We have become a culture in love with ourselves.

I was in McDonalds about a year ago when a middle aged man asked a young Hispanic cashier, "Do you speak English"? The young boy replied, "yes". The customer replied, "good a lot of you and your kind don't". The young male spoke perfect English. I apologized to this young man in front of the customer, and told the customer he should do the same. This man that walked in to buy a 99 cent cheeseburger, felt that he had the right to humiliate another citizen, at their place of employment.

I worked at JC Penney for several years. I seen adults turn into children in seconds, throwing items, screaming, and threatening me just because they could not use a coupon that the company put out (as always the exclusions were listed on the back). Selfishness leads to the rationalization that we can treat others as "lesser" beings. It gives us the right to humiliate and degrade them, and leave us with an air of superiority.

Many parents of today believe everyone, should cater to their children, reinforcing this self worshiping value. Little girls wear "I am a princess" shirts, and "I am king" bibs. Teachers are put to blame for a child's and parent's inadequacies. Blame is always tossed around, and everyone feels they are too special to have had anything to do with it. We are teaching our children to act like they are princesses and princes, and everyone else is paupers.

We are teaching our children they deserve to be worshiped, and people on "The Hills" are to be modeled. College kids of today have become embedded with partying, and use corny one liner's as an excuse to just "live for the day". Just living for the day now means instant gratification. Incessant sex, drugs, and cosmetic surgery, have become the standard for "living for the day". Living for the day has become synonymous with living for yourself and getting whatever you can get.

We feel the need to feed our egos with beautiful partners, big houses, cool cars, anything to make us feel unique, or special; anything to validate our feelings of importance. We demand our children to become competitive, everyone wants to be the best, and they want to have the best. People even pay extra money for a logo on their clothing, to feel validated.

We need to start teaching our children the value of being a friend, not just having friends. We need to teach children to show gratitude for what they have, rather than complaining about what they don't. We need to teach them to give when they have more than enough, rather than wasting it on peck implants. We need to be modeling the importance of family and communication, rather than beauty and money. It is time to teach our children how to respect others, and how to earn respect.

This article may sound bitter, in fact it is not. I do not believe everyone in society is like this. I believe there are many great people in our society that understand the basic concept of gratitude, and they do look out for others with little to no return on their work. I do believe that portion of society is getting smaller, and we are encouraging the negative traits in people with flakey reality shows, and celebrity worship. However, times change, and eventually this trend will shift. We will realize that two percent that separates us is not that large, and we have much more in common than what we have in differences.