Today's younger generation: "I'm so vain"

Just another reason to go back to your 1980s music collection. Today's college and high school students are increasingly narcissistic and, as a result, more likely to be lonely and depressed. How do we know? Why, look no further than the Billboard Hot 100, says Dr. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky:

Now, after a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs, Dr. DeWall and other psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. As they hypothesized, the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions.

more after the jump

When did "we" hear more songs about "us"? Why, the 1980s, of course. Unfortunately, the research takes note of such sickly sweet songs as "Ebony and Ivory", "Just the Two of Us", and Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate".