Fame and fortune: the new focus of TV for kids

Eight of the twenty children, or 40 percent, listed fame as the top priority for their future, more than any other option.

What's more, said Uhls, the kids seemed to be interested in "fame for its own sake," rather than because they were interested in developing a particular skill. One girl described fame in a conversation with the study moderator as, "Um, fame, being famous to me means like the world kinda knows you, and you know, just like being on the red carpet, and with like cameras flashing."

The message many kids are receiving today, said Uhls, is that anyone can be famous, and at a very young age, with "no connection to any particular skill, or hard work."

Fame in the YouTube age

How did fame get so ingrained in the minds of young people so quickly? Uhls and others point to the digital revolution, and specifically the rise of social media.

"A lot of social media is really about a focus on the self," said Uhls. "The internet gives you access to this huge audience. So YouTube, for example, it even says 'you' in the name. It's all about how many people watch your (clip)."

Many of today's youngest and most visible celebrities, Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black included, catapulted to fame thanks to YouTube. And some of the popular tween shows, "iCarly" especially, use the notion of internet-as-platform as a central plot device, blurring the lines between attainable reality and fantasy.

Fame culture

The uptick in fame on television is both a portion and a mirror of a larger culture, according to Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. Twenge is the co-author of "The Narcissism Epidemic," a book examining the phenomenon.

According to Twenge and her collaborator, W. Keith Campbell, kids' interest in fame is just one example of a larger cultural trend that emphasizes the self and breeds narcissistic tendencies.

"Narcissists really want attention, they want to be the best, they want to be a winner, but they're not necessarily any more talented, any more smart, any more beautiful," said Twenge. "Their goal is to become famous even though they don't have anything they could become famous for."

Twenge has some hefty evidence to support her theory that narcissism is on the rise, and not just among tweens. She published a study last month examining the changes in life goals among young adults between 1966 and 2009. The Millenial generation, they found, "considered goals related to extrinsic values (money, image, fame) more important and those related to intrinsic values (self-acceptance, affiliation, community) less important."

Where parents come in

These generational trends, and their pervasiveness, present a conundrum for parents. No one sets out to breed a narcissist. But no parent plans to crush their children's dreams, or wants to discourage them from planning to live life big.

The fact that many narcissists, fictional and otherwise, are now on consistent display on television presents another debate: how much to expose children to the shows in the first place, or whether their pervasiveness is too big a battle to fight.

Rebecca Snow, a mother of four in Provo, Utah, said she has a policy against all Disney Channel productions. "I found those shows to be very materialistic and very sexist," she said. "Very early on we decided to eliminate that from our family culture."

Her first two daughters, she said, readily accepted their parents' cynicism about the value of the shows they disallowed. But Snow's third daughter, Annabelle, "is very interested in what's cool and what's not cool." Annabelle's ardent love for Justin Bieber filled Snow with dread, she said.

But her infatuation actually presented an opportunity for her to talk about fame in a more constructive way. "That gave us a platform for us to say … when you work really hard, you sharpen your talents … he didn't just arrive (at fame)."