For the young men who have crossed the Rubicon of steroids to achieve the body beautiful, the development of man boobs is the least of their worries, writes Kendall Hill.

Those of you fluent in Greek mythology will recall that Narcissus was a beautiful but vain young hunter who fell so hopelessly in love with his own reflection that he gazed on it until he died. Hence narcissism: a fixation on oneself; excessive self-love.

Western society today is, almost certainly, the most narcissistic in human history. The selfie, the Oxford Dictionary's 2013 word of the year, is one of the more glaring, everyday expressions of our rampaging egos. As is the stampede for plastic surgery, a trend that has "gone through the roof" in the past two decades, according to Jean Twenge, co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.

The San Diego State University psychology professor and her co-author, Keith Campbell, tested 15,000 college students over three generations and found the present generation love themselves significantly more than college kids in the 80s and 90s.

Twenge, who will speak at the Happiness and Its Causes conference in Sydney next week, singles out reality television programs and the internet as two key culprits - enablers, even - of this new age of self-love.

"Reality television really makes narcissism seem normal to a whole generation of people. Normal and even glamorous," Twenge told Radio National presenter Lynne Malcolm on Sunday.

Meanwhile the Pandora's box of the internet "allows people to seek attention for themselves and fame for themselves in a way that wasn't possible a few decades ago". Airbrushed social media and online dating profiles fuel our obsession with self and the desire to present our shiniest, sexiest image to the world.

Much has been written already about the insidious effect of advertising ideals on women's body image and self-esteem. Now it is the turn of young men.

"I think when you look into the research into body image, what's happened to women is happening to men," says Matthew Dunn, senior lecturer in public health within the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University. "You have guys with eight-packs on the cover of magazines. You go to the gym and see guys with muscles that are bigger than my head."

Magazine covers and internet sites shout at males in ever more strident, army-major voices. Do you want to shred fat in just four weeks? Gain Muscle Mass Fast! Get Army strong!

Massive spikes in the importation of steroids and other prohibited growth stimulants suggest more and more Australian men are prepared to cross the Rubicon to achieve the body beautiful.

Customs seizures at Australian borders of so-called 'performance and image-enhancing' drugs - steroids, human growth hormone, Frankenstein stuff - have risen from less than 2,000 to 10,300 in five years, a 570 per cent increase. That averages out at almost 30 busts a day, many from intercepted online orders.

There are no official figures, of course, for the volume of banned product that makes it into the country, but the latest Australian Needle Syringe Program survey found three-quarters of new users in New South Wales were shooting up bodybuilding drugs, not heroin or amphetamines.

"Steroid use is creeping more and more into younger people," the Australian Medical Association president, Steve Hambleton, told AM earlier this year. "It comes with this wish to win at all costs and to attain the perfect body immediately."

Hambleton blamed doping scandals in elite sports such as football, athletics and cycling for raising the profile of 'personal enhancement' drugs.

Young men feeling pressured to look cut, ripped and pumped now know the quickest way to go about it, thanks to their favourite sporting stars. "The internet obviously is the place where things are much more available," Hambleton says.

Narcissistic urges, as Narcissus discovered, can have devastating consequences.

Shrunken testicles, impotence, depleted sperm count, baldness, pain when urinating, and gynecomastia are the best-known side effects of steroid use. Gynecomastia is the swelling of the glands in men's breasts. Man boobs. For steroid users, it's the least of their worries.

In Australia, steroids are only legally available via strictly monitored prescriptions. It is a criminal offence to obtain them any other way. Since January, when then-premier Barry O'Farrell drastically lifted penalties in a bid to combat violent one-punch attacks, steroid possession and supply in NSW carries a maximum jail term of 25 years.

Arrests for steroid use increased by more than 200 per cent over the five years to 2012, according to the Australian Crime Commission's Illicit Drug Data report. Only nine percent of those arrests in 2011-2012 involved women.

Steroid use has migrated from the dodgy fringes of society, from gangland thugs and preening hustlers, to the mainstream. The male mainstream. "It is the average person in the street now that is starting to think about these substances to attain the perfect body image," says Hambleton.

"We worry about our girls with body image," says Dunn, "but it is just as much young men we need to worry about now."

An edited multimedia version of this piece appears on the ABC's new tablet app The Brief, which can be downloaded here.

Kendall Hill has worked as a newspaper journalist and editor since 1990. View his full profile here.