Despite what some people say about today's teens, Millennials are no more self-absorbed than earlier generations, according to a major new study.
Teenagers: you see them texting away during history class, chatting on their cell phones at the movies, filling their Facebook page with self-portraits.
Those of us old enough to get into an R-rated movie without an ID check might roll our eyes. “I was never that self-centered,” we say. “Back in my day, [insert heroic story about walking five miles to school barefoot in a blizzard here].”
Well, as it turns out, either teens today aren’t so spoiled, or you were a bit of a brat yourself back in the day—because according to a comprehensive new study, “kids these days are about the same as they were back in the mid-1970s,” said Brent Donnellan, a psychology professor from Michigan State University.
Donnellan and fellow professor Kali Trzesniewski analyzed self-reported surveys from 500,000 high school seniors over a 30-year period, examining their opinions, happiness levels, and hopes for the future. And even though today’s teens may be more likely to listen to Regina Spektor on an iPod than the Rolling Stones on a record player, their overall attitudes were very similar to those of generations past.
The study [PDF link] found that Millennial teens were, in general, as happy and satisfied as their parents’ generation, though there were several key differences. Today’s teens are less trusting of institutions than they once were, but the researchers claim that this is also true of society at large. Today’s youth are also less anxious about social problems like race relations and hunger, and they have higher educational ambitions than their parents did.
So if you catch your Millennial kid surfing the Internet way past his bedtime again, relax—maybe he’s just looking at colleges.
And if you are a Millennial? Show your parents this article and demand an apology for all those “when I was your age” comments.