From the abstract it's a little bit of both but I didn't mean to make it sound like people are intentionally doing it. It's a stress reaction but that reaction ends up being attention-seeking behavior.

> they can be viewed as the 21th century expression of a culture-bound stress reaction of our post-modern society emphasizing the uniqueness of individuals and valuing their alleged exceptionality, thus promoting attention-seeking behaviours and aggravating the permanent identity crisis of modern man.