科学美国人60秒:Gap Grows between Wanting and Working

It’s a common complaint, perhaps leveled by every generation about the ones that follow: kids nowadays are too materialistic, with their inflated sense of entitlement, and now flat screens and cell phones. Well, turns out this gripe might finally be true. Because today’s adolescents seem to want more in the way of worldly goods than did teens 30 years ago, and they don’t really want to work for it.

That’s according to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. [Jean M. Twenge and Tim Kasser, Generational Changes in Materialism and Work Centrality, 1976-2007: Associations With Temporal Changes in Societal Insecurity and Materialistic Role Modeling]

To do the analysis, researchers turned to a survey that’s been given to about 15,000 high-school seniors every year since 1976. Among other questions, the kids were asked to rate the importance of having “lots of money” and the stuff money can buy, like a house, a new car, or a “motor-powered recreational vehicle.”

Compared to the Baby Boomers that graduated in the ‘70s, Millennial teens place more stock in the trappings of success. And they also express less interest in working hard to obtain what they covet.

And can you blame them? In an advertising-heavy consumer economy, why wouldn’t you think that "the good life" involves getting handed the goods?

—Karen Hopkin