Here – via Arts & Letters – is a fascinating article by Eric Hoover exploring how far we can identify common characteristics among the current (or any)  ‘young generation’ which are going to echo far into the future:

Kids these days. Just look at them. They’ve got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them?

Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps…

Figuring out young people has always been a chore, but today it’s also an industry. Colleges and corporations pay experts big bucks to help them understand the fresh-faced hordes that pack the nation’s dorms and office buildings.

As in any business, there’s variety as well as competition. One speaker will describe youngsters as the brightest bunch of do-gooders in modern history. Another will call them self-involved knuckleheads. Depending on the prediction, this generation either will save the planet, one soup kitchen at a time, or crash-land on a lonely moon where nobody ever reads

Or is all such analysis just a big noise by crafty academics to get lucrative research bucks and large speaking fees?

As the proud owner of three Millennials oscillating wildly (a bit like their father) between self-absorbed knuckleheaditude and breezy brilliance, I need to know the answer.