Do you think some youth are more selfish and emotionless today?

[Kievan Rus]

This thread is my question response to a few current events, most notably the South Hadley bullying case in which Phoebe Prince killed herself, plus a recent incident outside New York City where a young driver that was high on drugs killed somebody in an accident and showed absolutely no remorse. In the thread about the New York incident, plus the plethora of ones about the South Hadley case.

I myself am a member of the Millenial generation, and am just as disgusted by the selfish, emotionless behavior shown by some of the less scrupulous of my generation. Most members of this generation aren't like this; however, maybe it is just me, but it does seem to be that more members of my generation are like this than ones past, and those that are selfish/without any empathy seem to be more extreme than those in generations past.

Members of my generation, often (though not always) the high school "in crowd" and "mean girl" types, seem to have a real tendency to be extremely selfish, emotionless, and remorseless. Upon hearing the reaction of those responsible for Phoebe Prince hanging herself, it was very chilling...in fact, it almost kind of reminded me of what Timothy McVeigh's completely emotionless response to 168 people being killed by his bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma. Upon being led out of the courtroom, one of the defendants in the South Hadley case showed absolutely no emotion; and lest we forget, immediate following Phoebe Prince's tragic suicide, those responsible openly made fun of her.

While I saw nothing that was even close to the callousness and heartlessness of what happened at South Hadley when I was in high school, the "mean girls" and "in crowd" types of my high school, for the most part, had little room for empathy or caring. I was in high school when the 9/11 attacks happened; and by and large, it seemed as if some (but not all) the "mean girl" and "in crowd" types couldn't have cared less about what was going on in New York and Washington. They honestly cared more about ridiculous high school gossip than the fact that two of the world's tallest buildings had collapsed and killed thousands of innocent people. On these boards, somebody mentioned a similar anecdote. A high school history teacher showed a documentary about the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Nazi genocide of millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, gays, so forth and so on. Said poster (I don't remember who it was) stated that one member of the class openly stated when it was over that they were not moved by what they saw and couldn't have cared less about it. For people like that, they have little (if any) empathy or caring.

I also saw and still see that some of these types tend to be rather selfish, materialstic, and had a pretty strong anti-intellectualism to them, in addition to a strong disdain for anything that was different from them or the shallow ideals they held to.

What do you think? Do you think some members of the current generation of young people are more selfish, sociopathic and emotionless than members of past generations?