But now it appears that mobile technology, such as cell phones, social networks and mobile software, may be interfering with the natural process of growing up -- of learning to evolve beyond adolescent narcissism. It may enable us to live in a self-centered social environment devoid of both non-peers and personal criticism.

Cell phones enable teens, for example, to constantly maintain contacts with peers, and block out interactions with non-peers, such as younger kids and older adults. This process may alienate teens even further from people and hamper the process of developing healthy empathy and a feeling of membership in the larger community. Right at the moment in human development when we are supposed to grow up and face reality, mobile gadgets may shield us from it.

Social networks, for example, are actually pretty anti-social. Their main benefit is to control and limit interactions. Thousands of different kinds of Web sites, from YouTube to the news site you're reading now, allow anyone to post any sort of comment and "socialize" with other people. But only social networks enable us to create a me-centered private club.

If new technology really does promote narcissism, then younger people would be more narcissistic than older people, because they had mobile technology during their formative years, and have been shaped more by it.

You might say that young people have always been more narcissistic than older adults, but found that college students get more narcissistic every year, and have been doing so since at least 1982. What's fueling this trend?