Egos: Not in check

Canada.com and the Calgary Herald carried a CanWest News Service essay analyzing the implications of the discovery that Paris Hilton’s mobile phone archive included photos only of herself. W. Keith Campbell, a social psychologist at UGA, argued that ­dramatic increases in the population’s self-­esteem in the current generation have combined with ­technological advances for surprising results. “People talk about the ‘me generation’ and baby boomers, but now it’s even worse,” he said. “When you’re with your friends or family, typically your illusions of grandeur are constrained or minimized. But when you have a mechanism like the Web, you can be anything. So all those restraints that keep our egos in check are removed.” Technology, he said, lets people create a self-referential universe.