Adolescent Egocentrism

Adolescent ego-centrism is a trait of teenagers to focus only on themselves; their thoughts and experiences are more unique and vivid than anyone else's. This focus on the self gives rise to an imaginary audience, the people around the person, who are believed to be watching every action of the teenager. An adolescent anticipates the reactions of people around him, however, these thoughts are based on what the adolescent thinks of himself; admiring or critical. In a group of people an adolescent is constantly updating his imaginary audience. This is called an imaginary audience because this is not the normal social situation; most people do not focus on one other person in a crowd, they focus on themselves. Since this audience is not actually focused on him, it is in fact, a construct, the audience knows all of the adolescent's sensitivities and is laughing at them constantly.

The invincibility fable, or the personal fable as Elkind called it, is another ego-centric belief that he or she cannot be harmed or defeated by anything that may overcome someone else. This is why teenagers may drive faster than necessary, do drugs, or have unprotected sex. Some teenage females believe that pregnancy will happen to other females but never to them so why bother with precautions. Ego-centrism is simply an adolescent attempt to get attention and confirm or deny the views someone has of themselves.