XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: gs@j.com   
      
   A fascinating new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that   
   millennials (defined by Pew as Americans ages 18 to 33) are   
   drifting away from traditional institutions — political,   
   religious and cultural.   
      
   Before we make a value judgment about these changes, let’s lay   
   them out and understand how fundamentally they will transform   
   the structure of American society and our conception of societal   
   norms.   
      
   According to the survey and to Pew’s analysis of it:   
      
   ¦ “Half of millennials now describe themselves as political   
   independents and 29 percent are not affiliated with any religion   
   — numbers that are at or near the highest levels of political   
   and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the   
   last quarter-century.”   
      
   ¦ “Millennials are the first in the modern era to have higher   
   levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower   
   levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate   
   predecessor generations had at the same age.”   
      
   ¦ “Just 26 percent of millennials are married. When they were   
   the age that millennials are now, 36 percent of Gen Xers, 48   
   percent of baby boomers and 65 percent of the members of the   
   silent generation were married.”   
      
   ¦ “Asked a longstanding social science survey question,   
   ‘Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be   
   trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with   
   people,’ just 19 percent of millennials say most people can be   
   trusted, compared with 31 percent of Gen Xers, 37 percent of   
   silents and 40 percent of boomers.”   
      
   ¦ Millennials “are ‘digital natives’ — the only generation for   
   which” the Internet, mobile technology and social media “are not   
   something they’ve had to adapt to.”   
      
   Younger people in general are less likely to say that they are   
   patriotic or religious, but the gap between millennials and   
   Generation Xers is greater than the gap between most other   
   generations.   
      
   Millennials also are far more likely than other generations to   
   say they are supporters of gay rights.   
      
   Although half of millennials describe themselves as independent,   
   57 percent say their views on social issues “have become more   
   liberal” over the course of their lives. This is in direct   
   opposition to older generations, who, Pew says, have about half   
   or more of the group saying their social views “have become more   
   conservative.” One might argue that millennials simply haven’t   
   lived long enough to hit the triggers that might engender more   
   conservatism — marriage, families, mortgages — but it could just   
   as well be that this group of young people is fundamentally   
   different.   
      
   Part of the political issue is, again, that millennials seem to   
   shun institutions. Only about a third of them said there was a   
   “great deal of difference” between the Republican and Democratic   
   Parties. Still, Republicans have the most to worry about with   
   this group. As the survey puts it: “Even so, this generation   
   stood out in the past two presidential elections as strikingly   
   Democratic. According to national exit polls, the young-old   
   partisan voting gaps in 2008 and 2012 were among the largest in   
   the modern era, with millennials far more supportive than older   
   generations of Barack Obama.”   
      
   Ten years ago, 24 percent of millennials identified as   
   Republicans, but that number has steadily dropped and now stands   
   at a paltry 17 percent. By contrast, the percent identifying as   
   Democrats over the period fell only from 30 percent to 27   
   percent.   
      
   Furthermore, millennials were the sole generation in which a   
   majority supported bigger government with more services as   
   opposed to smaller government with fewer services. And although   
   most millennials, like most people in older generations,   
   disapproved of the new health care law, millennials were the   
   only generation in which a majority said it was the government’s   
   responsibility to ensure universal health care coverage.   
      
   Part of this divergence results from the fact that millennials   
   are more racially diverse than any other generation, with 43   
   percent of Americans in this age group nonwhite. When you look   
   just at white millennials, a majority still support smaller   
   government and reject the notion that it’s the government’s job   
   to ensure universal health care.   
      
   If there is an opening for Republicans, it is here: Millennials’   
   views on abortion and gun rights aren’t much dissimilar from   
   that of other generations, and millennials are far less likely   
   to say they are environmentalists.   
      
   All in all, we seem to be experiencing a wave of liberal-minded   
   detach-ees, a generation in which institutions are subordinate   
   to the individual and social networks are digitally generated   
   rather than interpersonally accrued.   
      
   This is not only the generation of the self; it’s the generation   
   of the selfie.   
      
   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/blow-the-self-ie-   
   generation.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)