I have to think too, from my own experiences, that a big part of the problem (at least in the Western world) is that we don't really teach people how to handle criticism growing up. Especially when it comes to creative endeavours. Handling criticism of any sort has always been one of my biggest challenges; I don't want to go into too much detail, but my upbringing and education didn't prepare me for it.
When it comes down to it, most of the time when we are growing up we either receive unwarranted praise for our creative efforts or unconstructive criticism.
Creative classes are usually optional by the time that you're in high school, and prior to that point, teachers don't specialize in the arts and follow and "A for Effort" mentality. Sure, if you're writing a story you might lose marks for technical issues (spelling and grammar) but you aren't judged on content. Not colouring within the lines is judged, but drawing really bad pictures, not so much. Every kid gets told how wonderful their crayon drawing is, and maybe praise is important, but my mother also took the opportunity to help me improve and I think that's equally important.
The flip side of this is unconstructive criticism. Anyone who grew up with a less-than-perfect parent will recognize this one, or, for that matter, anyone who went to school with more than one other kid. And occasionally less-than-perfect teachers; I could tell stories. The point is, until at least high school, most of the criticism we do receive is purely negative; see the treatise a few posts back on uses of the verb "to suck".
The internet has made this a lot worse. People online are extremely cliquey and randomly abusive. Fan fiction is a great example of this; most fan fiction is bad, but "reviews" of fan fiction are either gushing enthusiasm from other fans, or extreme negativity from... well, everyone else (to the point where I've seen budding authors told to go kill themselves. Multiple times.) DeviantArt is another good example here. There are very few opportunities in this day and age to get an honest opinion of your creative talent... and I'll just slip in here that many programmers and/or gamers are not socially well-adjusted. We tend not to interact with people more than necessary, and almost never outside of our comfort zone, and we don't get an opportunity to build up the bit of a thick skin necessary to receiving and incorporating feedback. I've seen many people say very nasty things to game designers, mod authors, etc, but I've also seen many of those same game designers and mod authors being very nasty and entitled right back at people. Neither is right, but you know what they say about two wrongs....
I don't really have a strong ending for this, so instead, I'm going to leave this here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html