     The egocentric mindset that can be found in the form of both the Republican ethos and our daily entertainment is now pervading the minds of your everyday college students. In the time of social media and celebrity worship, self-importance is now the norm more than ever. Just like how TV show contestants focus primarily on winning that million-dollar price for themselves, Millennials have been raised to concentrate more on themselves and less on society or their local community. The Chronicle of Higher Education released findings on a study that discovered “young Americans born between 1982 and 2002....are much less concerned about the environment and other people than they are about themselves”. Jean Twenge, a Psychology Professor at San Diego State University, argues that “the aphorisms have shifted to ‘believe in yourself’ and ’you’re special.’ It emphasizes individualism, and this gets reflected in personality traits and attitudes”. Overall, this change in mindset can be attributed to Reality Television and the creation of the “Me Generation”.
The truth about modern American society is that, whether on a game show or in U.S. government politics, winning at all costs is expected. Prose states that “certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception”. As Prose explains in her article, the focus of Reality Television is to compete with others through a crooked democracy where all of the contestants only look out for themselves. A quick show of hands in any U.S. college classroom today will prove that most, if not all, grew up watching reality television in the 2000s. This demographic of young adults are now able to vote on controversial topics or politicians with questionable ethics. In order to avoid a post-hoc fallacy, we must examine the effects of watching television in everyday society. In Channels of Power: The Impact of Television on American Politics, author Austin Ranney states that “the average person, on graduating from high school, has spent 12,000 hours with teachers, but 22,000 hours watching television. Ranney concludes that television “has, indeed, had profound (and frequently harmful) effects on our political life”. Psychology Today found in a 2010 University of Michigan survey of 14,000 college students found that empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another , had decreased 40% since the late 1970s. Through these findings, it is understood that media has an effect on the rationale of an everyday U.S. Citizen. This harmful effect that Ranney talks of is the desensitization of humane topics such as the War in Iraq or health insurance for the poor. Thanks to reality television, young adults have an indifferent outlook on life; one where the misfortunes of others are ignored and our own success should be our own priority.
Reality TV has turned the ideals of our youngest and most impressionable adults into a “generation me” that does not vote based on a solid foundation of morals, beliefs, and values, but rather one based on their own interests and desires. Prose's assumptions are still true today, as most Americans who grew up watching reality TV are now able to vote. These college-aged students generally do not worry about politics or topics that do not relate to them. Students are more self-centered than they have ever been, as they focus mostly on money, fame, and image, traits that sound eerily similar to contestants you would see on Survivor or The Bachelor. Even student's on important themes in politics such as human rights or global war are skewed thanks to entertainment and the media at large. But the media does have both negative and positive effects on young adults; shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report are giving them political news in the form of entertainment. If there is a spark of interest in politics, students will be more likely to be educated and invested in current events. Social media and the internet overall has also found a way to introduce politics to people at the tip of their fingers. Just because college students are currently seen as egocentric, it is possible that they feel as if they do not have the means to influence the U.S. Government on a larger scale. As these young college students get older, we will mostly likely see a change in maturity and understanding within them.
