Thanks to social media use, school grade inflation, and environmental factors, narcissistic behavior appears to be on the rise in children and teenagers, some psychotherapists and experts say.

Its prevalence in students under the age of 18 has increased by about 10 percent in the past 12 years and should be on the radar of school psychologists in the coming school year, according to David Liebert, a practicing psychotherapist based in Tampa, Florida.

Liebert cautions that narcissism is a very broad term and that mental health professionals generally refrain from diagnosing the specific personality disorder in children because their personalities are still developing. Consequently, estimates of cases vary widely.

Narcissistic personality disorder is defined as a need for admiration, a pervasive pattern of grandiosity—or an overinflated sense of one’s importance—and a lack of empathy. It affects less than 2 percent of the general population, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Liebert said he believes that in recent years, the self-esteem movement may have gone too far. The need for constant approval is a common problem in communities where children get trophies for finishing last and where gold stars are no longer awarded for the best work for fear of excluding others.

“A minimally bruised self-esteem,” balanced with humility, is healthy, Liebert said. “You’ve got to provide kids a little more opportunity to fail.”

Anita Horvath, a psychotherapist based in Cobleskill, New York, said narcissistic behavior often occurs in individuals who, as children, were praised for their performance but not seen as a whole being.

She believes this behavior has steadily increased over time. Today’s children are spending more time away from their parents. Even when they’re with their parents, they may be less connected, in an era that’s focused on performance and productivity rather than on the whole child. Consequently, they have less help with navigating negative experiences.

What’s more, parents may be immature themselves, Horvath said.

“Oftentimes, parenting is not about meeting the child’s emotional needs. It’s the child who is asked to meet the parents’ needs,“ she said. ”Emotionally immature parents get triggered, project it onto the child, and the child is forced to adjust to receive their love. And sometimes, as a result, their personality shapes itself in a disordered way.”

Horvath believes corrective measures are rooted in traditional family values, such as marriage, family, and owning up to and working through one’s own struggles.

Instead, “we buy them things again and again, parent permissively, leave them alone with the internet, don’t take responsibility for them and don’t give them responsibility, don’t spend enough quality time with them, and then wonder why they seem grandiose,” she said.

Trauma Response

There’s an umbrella of narcissistic behavior, but the formal diagnosis requires precise criteria, according to Tina Lintner, senior clinical manager of residential programs at Rawhide Youth Services in New London, Wisconsin.

“How freely people use the word narcissist is really unjust and unfair,” she said.

Adolescents who experienced neglect and trauma often go into self-preservation mode and lack empathy for others, she said.

These kids might feel that they were a burden to others, and when left alone, they made poor decisions without supervision, including bullying others to disguise their low self-esteem, Lintner said. Those who display self-importance and grandiosity could be lacking self-confidence and self-worth, she said.

The boys treated in Rawhide’s residential program come from the state’s juvenile justice system. They live in small group settings with peers, supervisory staff, and therapists. They are responsible for making meals, cooperatively managing their living space, learning consideration for others, and acquiring coping and life skills along the way. Their use of phones, video games, and social media is restricted.

“You do see more stable behavior without [online devices],” Lintner said. “It’s quite noticeable.”

Catrina Drinning-Davis, a Texas-based therapist who works with survivors of domestic abuse, said narcissism is a common disorder in people who abuse their spouses or children.

Many of them learn that behavior from their parents or grew up with a sense of entitlement stemming from a lack of consequences for their actions. Abuse patterns in romantic relationships, she said, can start as early as age 14 and worsen over time.

“It’s all about me—if you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to make your life hell,” Drinning-Davis said. “Abusive people also look for people younger than them.”

A 2024 meta-analysis of data from more than 37,000 participants across the United States, Canada, and Western Europe suggested that while levels of narcissism fade from childhood into older adulthood, “people who were more narcissistic than average as children remained more narcissistic than average as adults.”

Parents’ Role

Narcissistic behavior gets passed down, according to Rick Rodgers, a licensed clinical social worker based in Indiana. He treats narcissism as a family problem, not an individual one. In most cases, he said, a parent is also narcissistic or has an undiagnosed condition such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or even some level of autism.

A narcissistic parent either completely neglects their child or tries to live vicariously through them with unrealistic expectations, he said.

“The baby boomer generation is the most narcissistic generation,” Rodgers said. “Remember those commercials from the ‘80s and ’90s—'It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?’ It was a public service announcement because boomers were focused on themselves and not their children.”

Tim Diehl, father and former pastor in Reading, Pennsylvania, said there’s more peer pressure on parents now to cater to their children’s every need. He pointed to travel sports, which can be expensive and time-consuming, as an example.

“Everyone else is doing that for their kids because they feel like that defines them as a parent, but most parents don’t like having to drive them around so much, and the kids don’t appreciate it,” Diehl said.

Diehl said teens are somewhat naturally selfish; it’s not unusual for them to think everything revolves around them.

Social media exacerbates the generation gap. Parents often appear less interesting than the virtual world. Adults in the home allow children to become disconnected from reality, when they should be pushing them out of their comfort zone, Diehl said.

“There’s value from that job you didn’t like, that boss you didn’t like,” he said. “All of the things we don’t like kind of serve us in the long run.

“Maturity is about relationships and wisdom. Disconnection and immediacy are antagonistic to wisdom. Too many of us [parents] are not paying attention. The work of adulthood is learning to pay attention.”

According to Leibert, parents can curb narcissistic behavior in children by instilling that there’s something beyond themselves, such as family, God, and country.

“Take on some responsibility that will offer no praise but still make someone else’s life better,” he said.

Social Media

The typical teenage struggle to fit in has evolved into a quest to become famous and be better than others, according to Mark Gregston, founder of Parenting Today’s Teens, a Texas-based nonprofit. He has worked with adolescents in group home settings for five decades.

Social media and influencers have played a role in this disturbing trend, he said.

“People eventually find consumption with self isn’t going anywhere,” Gregston said. “There’s a cost to becoming consumed with yourself. You don’t grow up.”

Gregston teaches young people and their parents the value of personal interaction, deeper conversations, and relationships.

Teens don’t have access to cell phones during their year at Gregston’s residential counseling center, Heartlight.

When they return home, he said, “their biggest problem is finding like-minded peers who don’t care so much about phones.”

Liebert said classroom phone bans, which will take effect in schools across several states in the upcoming academic year, are a step in the right direction.

“I’ve never had a patient say to me, ‘When you told me to cut down social media use and reduce scrolling by 50 percent, my life fell apart,’” he said.