“Anything we do that’s political always falls flat,” said Ricky Van Veen, 27, a founder and the editor in chief of CollegeHumor.com, a popular and successful Web site. “It doesn’t seem like young people now are into politics as much, especially compared to their parents’ generation. I think that could lend itself to the argument that there is more narcissism and they’re more concerned about themselves, not things going on around them.”

Yet despite exhibiting some signs of self-obsession, young Americans are not more self-absorbed than earlier generations, according to new research challenging the prevailing wisdom.

Some scholars point out that bemoaning the self-involvement of young people is a perennial adult activity. (“The children now love luxury,” an old quotation says. “They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”) Others warn that if young people continue to be labeled selfish and narcissistic, they just might live up to that reputation.

“There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Kali H. Trzesniewski, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Ms. Trzesniewski, along with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and Michigan State University, will publish research in the journal Psychological Science next month showing there have been very few changes in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of youth over the last 30 years. In other words, the minute-by-minute Twitter broadcasts of today are the navel-gazing est seminars of 1978.

Ms. Trzesniewski said her study is a response to widely publicized research by Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who along with colleagues has found that narcissism is much more prevalent among people born in the 1980s than in earlier generations. Ms. Twenge’s book title summarizes the research: “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled  and More Miserable Than Ever Before” (2006, Free Press).