Does it seem to you like more and more people are getting more and more into themselves? If so, you're not the only one to notice.

A group of five researchers just published a quarter-century study of the attitudes of college students with a telling title: "Egos Inflating Over Time." (For those of you who don't read long academic studies, you can find summaries in places like My Way News and Los Angeles Times).

The study's a big one — the biggest ever of its kind, the researchers say. Based on more than 16,000 people's responses to survey questions from 1982 through 2006, it finds that the idea that people are getting more self-centered isn't just the grumbling of cranky old-timers who deplore "kids these days." It's backed up by evidence: For example, responses to a survey called the Narcissism Personality Inventory — which asks for responses to statements like "I can live my life any way I want to," "If I ruled the world it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" — show a consistent and large (30 percent) rise in narcissistic attitudes over the years.

We need to be careful about overgeneralizing here: These things can't be measured precisely, and there are so many differences between individuals. Still, it's hard to deny that the researchers are on to a trend. We see the evidence all around: Look no further than the mountains of self-indulgent junk on YouTube and MySpace — stuff that just screams Pay attention to me. (Not that narcissism is the only factor for all of them, as Roberto Rivera pointed out recently, but for a lot of them it's glaringly obvious). And don't even get me started on all those people who jabber loudly and often pointlessly on their cell phones in public, not knowing or not caring how much they're annoying everyone else.

OK, I'm getting cantankerous: Hey, I'm just not fond of this trend. I'm not surprised, though. As the researchers suggest, it'd be surprising if this weren't happening.

For one thing, "current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," says study co-author Elizabeth Twenge of San Diego State University. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention seeking, as does YouTube." When anyone can be seen by thousands, even millions, of people, we're bound to see a lot of folk who imagine they're worthy of a big audience simply because they can get one. That's the whole point of reality TV, which is also (alas) omnipresent.

Maybe more important, though, we're getting conditioned to self-celebration from an early age. Twenge notes that in preschools, kids commonly sing (to the tune of "Frere Jacques") "I am special, I am special. Look at me." Her comment: "We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special and having children repeat that back. Kids are self-centered enough already."

That may seem harsh if we think anything little kids do is cute. Still, Twenge's got a point. I don't know if she's a Christian, but she's taking original sin seriously: After all, you don't have to be a Christian to notice that we're self-centered from infancy (especially in infancy), and that we need to be trained to rein in that attitude, not to indulge it, much less treat it as a virtue. If we're not, the results when we grow up aren't pretty. As the study notes, narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."

No one much likes those qualities in other people. Nevertheless, narcissism in ourselves can be attractive. That's partly because of the aforementioned, age-old temptations of original sin. Yet it's also partly because of some of the ways our culture tries to dress up narcissism to make it seem like something more respectable, even admirable.

The best examples can be found in those statements from the Narcissism Personality Index.

Take "I think I am a special person," the adult variant of the preschool children's song. This is what we call Self-Esteem, and we're all supposed to think it's a Very Good Thing. But self-esteem shouldn't necessarily be celebrated.

To be sure, there's a valuable kind of self-esteem that comes from knowing you're God's child. There's also a different kind that appeals to our innate tendency to see the universe orbiting around ourselves, and to value (or dislike) others mainly based on how they suit our desires. When we simply embrace self-esteem per se, we leave the door wide open to the latter kind — and it doesn't hate to accept the invitation.

The same goes for the phrase "I can live my life any way I want to." This is the purest expression of a worldview centered on "rights" — the idea that personal choice is the highest value of all. As Americans, we're taught to revere this worldview; none of us want to be accused of violating someone else's rights, and we certainly insist that no one violate our own. But again, this is an idea that can be a lot less noble than it's meant to sound.

That's because the modern idea of "rights" is devoid of the understanding that the Founders (among others) had: That we're made in the image of God, and that there are right and wrong ways for us to live independent of our personal preferences. To earlier generations, securing our rights was just a means to ensure we can focus on humbly pursuing God's will. To many of us today, invoking our rights is the opposite: It's a way to arrogantly decree ourselves the only legitimate deciders of moral issues.

Some of us think we know better than to adopt these attitudes, and often we do. Yet we're fallen beings, and as long as we breathe the cultural air around us, we're bound to inhale a lot of the spiritual viruses it carries. So if we don't want to fall victim to those viruses, we need to make a conscious effort to be countercultural.

Instead of lifting up self-esteem, for instance, we should stress modesty; instead of saying "I am special," we should say "I'm nobody special." We shouldn't do this because we hate ourselves, but because we understand it's better to shun our egos and focus on others. That's what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Philippians 2:3 when he says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves."

Likewise, instead of thinking first about our rights, we should focus on our duties to our neighbors. We have the best example, as Paul reminds us in Philippians 2:5-6:

Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, but did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.

Although Paul knew we weren't going to consistently live up to Christ's standard, he also knew that it was the standard. The biggest problem with our culture today isn't that it tries to do what's right and falls short; the problem is that it doesn't admit what's right in the first place.

If we don't want to be absorbed by the Me First culture, we need to keep our eyes on Christ's standard. That may seem obvious to Christians, but as the English essayist Samuel Johnson wrote centuries ago, "Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed."

Me, I know I do.