Millenials Are Underestimated

While many people think of Millenials as a continuation of Generation X, often even giving them the name Generation Y, Howe and Strauss demonstrate how wrong this idea is. As teenagers, members of Generation X are responsible for the highest rates of youth criminality in American history. On the other hand, Millenials are reversing the trend of rising youth crime rates and sending those rates back to levels not seen since the mid-1960s. Despite all the attention given to mass school shootings such as Columbine, school violence is down substantially since its peak in the early-1990s. In the 1992-1993 school year, there are 55 violent deaths in American schools compared with 25 in 1998-1999, 15 of which are deaths at Columbine.

A similar pattern is found with drug use which peaked in the early-1980s, and while it has risen somewhat in the 1990s it remains far...