This year’s Beloit mindset list is out. The fact that “For this generation of entering college students, born in 1994, Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead” is pretty remarkable.
Other interesting tidbits:
The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them.
They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it.
There has always been football in Jacksonville but never in Los Angeles.
Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all.
Since they’ve been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16 cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp.
Benjamin Braddock, having given up both a career in plastics and a relationship with Mrs. Robinson, could be their grandfather.
Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf.
A significant percentage of them will enter college already displaying some hearing loss.
The Real World has always stopped being polite and started getting real on MTV.
They have lived in an era of instant stardom and self-proclaimed celebrities, famous for being famous.
Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for “save,” a telephone for “phone,” and a snail mail envelope for “mail” have oddly decorated their tablets and smart phone screens.
There have always been blue M&Ms, but no tan ones.’
Probably the most tribal generation in history, they despise being separated from contact with their similar-aged friends.
Point-and-shoot cameras are soooooo last millennium.
Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes.
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics 