What if this self-obsession was just normal behaviour? What if, in fact, a little bit of narcissism was good for you? The problem with the current ubiquity of the word ‘narcissist’ and the venom with which it’s used is that it conflates two things: normative and pathological narcissism, obscuring the meaning of both. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 (sometimes known as the bible of mental health disorders) defines NPD as “comprising a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), a constant need for admiration and a lack of empathy”. And actual cases of NPD are still minimal, with estimates between 0–6.2% of the US population. Even allowing for the fact that pathological narcissists are arguably less likely to have the insight to demand a diagnosis, this is nowhere close to approaching the 54% prediction. Narcissism is and always has been normal human behaviour, especially in adolescence, when teenage brains spend a large part of their time grappling with the question of Who am I? and trying on new selves for size – a behaviour we now, usefully, carry with us into adulthood.

The only difference now is that we have more useful tools to do this; instead of conducting these investigations in the privacy of our bedrooms, this is now played out in public on social media, amping its apparent prevalence and giving it a sheen of toxicity. The same imaginary toxicity was once applied to Sony Walkmans, video games or even Elvis’s hips, which were each tipped to bring down entire generations.

There’s another issue with that 2009 study. By then, the language around self-esteem that had sprung up in the 1970s – what novelist Tom Wolfe called the “Me decade” – was embedded in our culture. Young people had been, rightly, encouraged to like themselves. Unsurprisingly then, 75% of students interviewed reported that they were satisfied with themselves, up from 66% in 1975. And, I would argue (and do in detail in The Future Of The Self) that’s a good thing. A good thing too that there were also increases in young people identifying with phrases such as “I am assertive” and “I am an important person”.

So, don’t switch off social media just yet. Yes, there are some pathological narcissists out there – Trump, anyone? But the rest of us? We’re vain at times. A little selfish. But that’s not the end of the world – it’s just part of it.

Joanna Nadin is a novelist, an associate professor at the University of Bristol and the author of The Future Of The Self, published by Melville House UK.

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Are you a narcissist? That might not be so bad