millennials

Energy Action Coalition, the largest youth advocacy coalition in the country, is challenging the findings of a recent study undercutting youth commitment to the environment because of major issues with the study’s methodology, opposing polls with polar opposite results, and actual youth involvement in climate, energy, and environmental issues.

The new report from San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge claims that today’s young adults, known as Millennials, are significantly less concerned about the environment than the two preceding generations (the Baby Boomers and Generation X). However Twenge, who has made a career out of positioning Millennials as narcissistic and unengaged, uses flawed methodology and analysis which thoroughly discredit her findings. Twenge also ignores the actual involvement of youth in the climate movement, through coalitions like Energy Action Coalition.

“This study is appalling, and completely demeans the very real work that today’s young people are doing on the environment,” said Maura Cowley, executive director of Energy Action Coalition. “It’s methodology is flawed and it undermines the 10,000 students who came to Washington, DC in April 2011 for the Power Shift conference, the largest organizer training in American history, the 400,000 young people who pledged to vote on climate, energy and environmental issues in our 2008 Power Vote campaign, and the thousands of youth voters who joined with the wider community to surround the White House this past November to urge President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

Methodology of Twenge study refuted:

• Mike Hais and Morley Winograd, reputable pollsters and experts on generational trends completely refute the methodology of the study and point to consistently misleading studies from Twenge: http://mikeandmorley.com/wordpress/?p=99

Other studies demonstrate Millennial generation and youth voters are very passionate and engaged on environmental issues:

• Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel cites Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll that environmental issues as #1 best way to turn out young people to polls.
  http://washingtonindependent.com/87345/emanuel-hopes-to-push-energy-to-get-young-americans-to-the-polls
• A 2009 poll by Benenson Strategy Group found that “After education, investing in renewable energy and protecting our environment emerge as the most important issues for youth when deciding whether or not to re- elect their Senator.”
  http://www.docstoc.com/docs/11316784/ACES_Release
• A 2011 poll by Pew Research Center found that Millennials are more likely than older generations to support clean energy and environmental protection and to believe the science on climate change.
  http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/section-8-domestic-and-foreign-policy-views/

Young People Leading on Environmental Issues, Climate & Energy In Unprecedented Ways:

• Young people led the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, the defining environmental issue of 2011. Their activism was credited for compelling President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline by the Los Angeles Times, USAToday.
• In April 2011, over 10,000 young people came to Washington, DC for Power Shift 2011, the largest organizing training in U.S. history. Their interest and power on environmental issues was recognized by President Obama, and covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, HuffingtonPost.

In 2008, over 400,000 young people pledged to vote on climate, energy and environmental concerns as part of the Power Vote campaign, one of the largest youth vote campaigns in 2008. Young people have pledged to spend over 300,000 hours standing up to big polluters to make progress on climate and energy in 2012: http://www.wearepowershift.org/pledge

Energy Action Coalition is a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement. Working with hundreds of campus and youth groups, dozens of youth networks, and hundreds of thousands of young people, Energy Action Coalition and its partners have united a burgeoning movement behind winning local victories and coordinating on state, regional, and national levels in the United States and Canada.

Link to press release.

EDITOR's Note:: To take action on this, please tweet to AP Reporter Martha Irvine and ask her to do further research.

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Today you may have noticed an onslaught of "narcissistic Millennial" articles across the internet. This is because Dr. Jean Twenge, the San Diego State University professor whose career is devoted to portraying Millennials as narcissistic and "Gen Me" has a new article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The article, which is behind a paywall, was covered by the AP and then a number of additional outlets in response.

The premise is that Millennials are more narcissistic and less concerned with others than Gen X or the Baby Boomers, and more shockingly, care less about the environment than previous generations at the age of 18.

Professors Morley Winograd and Michael Hais have an excellent rebuttal of the article that I strongly encourage you to read here.

In the comments to their post, I raised an additional point about Twenge's environment analysis:

Another thing that I noticed from the American Freshman survey was that both Boomers and Gen X environmental concern benefited from two singular events that dramatically increased concern about pollution.

The pollution question was added to the 1971 survey after Lake Erie was declared a “dead lake” due to industrial pollution in 1970 and the Cuyahoga River was so polluted it set on fire in 1969. This created a national outcry and resulted in the Great Lakes Water Quality Act and Clean Water Act. In turn, responses to the pollution question began with a very high percentage: 44.4% in 1971 and 46.3% in 1972. After this peak in attention, there was a 12 point drop in 1973 and the downward trend continued.

During the Gen X time period, there was another boost in the results. In 1990, 34.4% of respondents rated the pollution question highly, a 5.6 point boost from the year before. The reason: the Exxon/Valdez oil spill in 1989. Again, this resulted in a boost in environment concern for a couple years that then dropped off over time.

Since Twenge’s analysis ends in 2009, the Millennial generation’s event that increased attention of pollution, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, is not included.

Twenge using the mean of each generation’s responses results in the perception that the Boomers and Gen X had much higher sustained concern about pollution, when in fact they both benefited from outlier years that raised the mean.

As you mentioned in the post, the updated question in 2011 resulted in 40.8% of Millennials rating it as a top concern, close to the post-Erie Boomer number.

In his usual ill-timed way, as “Occupy” protests started to spread across the country, columnist and author Tom Friedman used his appearance on MTV to tell ”young people [that they] need to be paying attention right now because we’re messing with your future.”

This was only the most recent occasion when Friedman suggested that today’s young people—the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003)—are somehow too quiet, inattentive, or apathetic about the weighty issues that confront their generation and the nation. At least as far back as 2007, when the issue was the Iraq war, Friedman argued that Millennials should follow the example of his generation—Baby Boomers—and take to the streets to directly protest the war and confront the government that was waging it, even as Millennials were organizing to elect a presidential candidate who kept his promise to phase out America’s involvement in that conflict.

Millennials are not apathetic or inattentive. Given their relatively limited employment prospects, high student loan debts and the fact that it is their generation that makes up most of America’s fighting force in Iraq and Afghanistan, it defies logic to suggest that Millennials are unaware of and do not care about what is going on around them.

In 2008, Millennials, for all practical purposes, elected President Obama. Turning out in larger numbers than young people had for decades and voting for Barack Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% to 32%), their generation contributed about 80 percent of the president’s popular vote margin of victory. A recent CNN survey indicates that Obama maintains this same 2:1 lead among Millennials against all of his likely 2012 GOP opponents. (PDF) And, Millennials hold positions that are in almost total contrast to those of older generations on the range of issues that are currently the focus of debate in American politics. According to Pew Survey Research Center data, by a 54% to 39% margin Millennials favor a larger activist government that “provides more services” to a “smaller government that provides fewer services.” By 64% to 31% Millennials endorse gay marriage and by 69% to 26% they believe that immigrants strengthen rather than threaten American society and values.

Of course, Friedman might argue that just because Millennials have distinctive beliefs, they don’t seem to be very busy acting on those beliefs. Actually, however, Millennials are plenty busy. Perhaps if Friedman were to meet and talk with Millennials such as Hilary Doe, who heads the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network efforts to develop and implement a comprehensive program to reshape all aspects of American life by 2040 detailed in their Blueprint for a Millennial America, he might think differently about the level of public advocacy among Millennials. Or maybe he should observe the Millennial Leadership Summit in November in New York City where, Mobilize.org, the organization Maya Enista leads, will provide leadership development opportunities for already successful Millennial social entrepreneurs and encourage other members of the network to further develop their leadership skills..

Maybe Friedman is missing all of this involvement and hard work because what Millennials are doing and how they go about doing it doesn’t make for “good TV” like the “in your face” protest tactics that Friedman’s Boomer Generation used almost half a century ago. But despite Boomer fixation with the technology of their youth, just because it’s not on TV, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Millennials are neither inactive nor docile, but are working hard to fix the unresponsive institutions and inequitable systems they have inherited from earlier generations. If Boomers would take the time to look in the right places they would see—and maybe even feel good about—what Millennials are doing to clean up the mess that Friedman acknowledges his generation created for its kids and grandkids.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of the newly published Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America and Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.

America is about to enter a presidential campaign that promises to be filled with divisive rhetoric and sharp differences over which direction the nominees want to take the country. This will be the fourth time in American history that the country has been sharply divided over the question of what the size and scope of government should be. Each time the issue was propelled by vast differences in beliefs between generations that caused the country to experience long periods of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), before ultimately resolving the issue in accord with the ideas and beliefs of a new generation.

Every eighty years America engages in this rancorous, sometimes violent, debate about our civic ethos. The first occurred during and after the Revolutionary War and resulted in the most fundamental documents of our democracy: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

The second took place during the Civil War. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments codified the outcome of that debate --- this time in favor of the federal government asserting its power over state laws when it came to fundamental questions of personal liberty and civil rights. It took the Civil War and a massive increase in Washington’s power to accomplish the end of slavery, although it would be another century until the rights of freedom and equality were fully extended to African-Americans.

And in the 1930s, the economic deprivations experienced by most Americans from the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, and the collapse of corporate capitalism, led to support for a “New Deal” for the forgotten man that placed the responsibility for economic growth and opportunity squarely on the federal government. The government demanded by the GI Generation (born 1901-1924) greatly surpassed the conventional views of earlier generations.

In each case, the resolution of these debates depended on the emergence of a rising, young civic-oriented generation that thought the nation’s dominant political belief system should contain a strong role for government, overturning the more conservative and limited-government views of the older generations then in power.

Now, as previously, the highly charged ideological arguments on both sides of the issue generate great agitation and anger among older generations, especially Baby Boomers, who have driven our political life towards ever wider polarization. As a result, the resolution of today’s debate over the nation’s civic ethos is not likely to come from older Americans who seem incapable of and unwilling to compromise their deeply held values and beliefs.

This time around, the largest generation in American history, Millennials, (born 1982- 2003), that will comprise more than one in three adult Americans by the end of this decade, are destined to play a decisive role in finding a consensus answer to this critical question. If the United States is to emerge from this most recent period of FUD, it will have to look to the newest civic-oriented generation, Millennials, for both the behavior and the ideas that will bridge the current ideological divide and spur the country into making the changes necessary to succeed in the future.

Millennials believe that collective action, most often at the local level, is the best way to solve national problems. Using social media, Millennials are organizing groups like the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network, to present a very different vision of America’s future. In this Millennialist future, the idea of top down solutions developed by experts in closed discussions will give way to bottom up, action-oriented movements. This will topple institutions as dramatically as Napster upended the recording industry, or the Arab Spring changed the Middle East. Just as their parents set the rules within which Millennials were free to exercise their creative energies when they were growing up, the new generation will continue to look to the federal government to set national goals or guidelines, as has long been the view of Boomer progressives. However, the way in which these guidelines are implemented will not be determined in remote and opaque bureaucracies, but by individuals in local communities across the country. In this way, Millennials will embrace progressive values, but with approaches that may be welcomed by many conservatives.

In the midst of the country’s current period of FUD, it is easy to despair that the nation will be unable to resolve its divisions and come to consensus about a new civic ethos. But throughout its history, when America has been equally fearful of the future, a new civic generation has risen to foster the necessary transition. In the end, this emerging generation served both itself and the country well. Now it is the Millennial Generation’s turn to serve the nation and move America to a less fearful and less divided future.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of the newly published Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation Is Remaking America and Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.

Photo by Kevin Dooley.

It's not every day we report on a campus newspaper editorial here, but sometimes one is problematic enough to require a response.

The Georgetown student newspaper -- the Hoya -- published a disappointing editorial today, calling for the disempowerment of students while arguing that national leaders should be left to continue their assault on our generation.

...Student body presidents are elected to represent their peers in campus-specific proposals that are designed to make college life easier. National political representation, however, should be left to the congressmen and senators that many of those two million-plus college students elect of their own free will.

The campaign, which kicked off August 2, claimed to represent "our generation," but what it became was a grandstanding gesture by student leaders who saw a publicity opening. They got what they wanted: endless web, newspaper and television press, including buzz over a conference call with President Obama. The coalition expanded quickly, not because the student body presidents were being urged by their respective constituents to mobilize, but because they found company in their equally ambitious counterparts at other universities.

But in the end, what was actually accomplished? Elected campus leaders may have written a letter and filled the Twitter feeds of Congressmen with the now famous hashtag, but students did not march en masse in the streets of Washington. Student body presidents did not compel their peers to action by coordinating a phone-a-thon to congressional leaders. Nor did they solicit the cooperation of the College Republicans or College Democrats, two political forces on campus who may have been better equipped to take on Capitol Hill during the debt crisis.

While we understand GUSA's good intentions, it is important they remember their place as representatives of Georgetown students to the administration, not to politicians. GUSA executive representatives did not advertise a political campaign when they were running back in February. While Healy Hall and Capitol Hill were designed to mirror each other across Washington, GUSA leaders should stick to leading who they were elected to lead — our student body.

The editorial board disapproved of their fellow Georgetown student, student body president Mike Meaney, organizing a coalition of national student government presidents. The campaign--"Do We Have a Deal Yet"--was created to pressure Congress to stop bickering during the debt ceiling debate/budget crisis and to strike a deal with the next generation in mind, not the next election. It seems that the editorial board would have rather seen more of a focus on campus-specific matters than on "grandstanding gestures" protesting policies and discussions that ostensibly have no direct relevance to Georgetown students' lives.

Of course, the discussions and eventual compromise--if one could call it that--absolutely impacts the quality of life of each college student. For example, did you know that part of the ceiling deal takes money out of the pockets of loan-paying students? Grad students--used to being able to attend class without worrying about interest accruing on their loans--now find that reality taken away. Students who made 12 consecutive payments on their loans in a timely fashion used to be rewarded with a credit. As of July 1, 2012, that no longer exists.

Yes, these issues are made abstract and mind-numbing by the media, which generally aren't capable of facilitating a meaningful, substantive discussion on issues. And a system of higher education, resting on a bunch of siloed departments and divisions unwilling to cooperate, doesn't exactly serve as the best socializing force. Mix those together with an inability to see healthy conflict and a distaste for anything containing the word "politics," and we get the editorial quoted above, which surely represents something close to the views of many students.

What's sad is that this view--that officeholders are the experts and that students' roles are to merely take space on college campuses and exclusively agonize about matters like campus pub closures--is misguided at best and simply unaffordable right now given the problems we all face. Yes--there are problems on our campuses that student governments were elected to solve. But any student government with which I've affiliated is tasked with the responsibility of improving the lives of the students they represent. There is no such thing as a "campus bubble."

Various cultural, economic, and social forces infiltrate campus confines every second of every day. In taking on the task of representing students, student government representatives are obligated to lobby their local, state, and federal governments. Because politics is everywhere, the reality is that everyone is a politician, navigating various systems of power whether they like it or not--even the student journalists writing the editorial.

While compartmentalizing these systems would simplify the job of covering their campus, unfortunately things in the "real world" aren't that cut and dry. Yes, students are citizens of their campus and should have a say on something like a campus pub being slated to close. But students are also citizens of the town, state, country, and planet in which their campus is located. Policies passed at various levels of society impact the student experience, thereby creating a need for any elected student representative to serve as an advocate on and off campus; it also creates a need for student journalists to help their peers understand these impacts. Even though it might make these journalists' jobs a bit more complicated, that's what we need.

Students and young people are marginalized enough in our society; we don't need to do it to ourselves. If it were up to the Hoya editorial board, young people would go back to the kids' table and mind our p's and q's. We can't afford to take that approach any longer, however. The college student body presidents should be commended for 1.) observing the impact the debt discussion has on our generation--their campuses included--and 2.) for speaking out against the process. If anything, these student leaders had the opportunity to, and could have done more to stand up for their constituents, including broadening the number of participants to include the constituents themselves. I hope this collaborative activism continues and intensifies, and I hope to see the Hoya and other student newspapers cover it as they should.

President Barack Obama has told his supporters that the 2012 presidential election will be about two contrasting visions of the nation's future. In his vision, "everyone pays their fair share," so that there is "shared sacrifice and shared opportunities" and the government plays a big part in helping the private sector prosper.

By contrast, the newest Republican candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, pledged to those listening to his announcement speech to free the nation from "the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, who would spend our treasure, who downgrade our future and micromanage our lives" and to "make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential as possible."

These starkly different messages make it clear that America is now engaged in the fourth debate in its history about the size and scope of government and doing it with all the rancor and heated rhetoric that have characterized each of the previous debates.

The issue was at the heart of the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution when newspaper printing presses were destroyed by those who disagreed with editorials on the issue. Eighty years later, it caused the nation to be torn apart during the Civil War. And 80 years after that, the Supreme Court declared minimum wage laws unconstitutional until a political consensus was framed around FDR's New Deal that not even the court could resist.

Each time the issue of what the nation's civic ethos should be has exposed vast differences in beliefs between generations. And, each time the country experienced a long period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt before the debate was resolved in favor of a new generation's ideas and beliefs. This historical pattern suggests that the best way to predict the outcome of today's debate is to examine the beliefs and attitudes of America's newest generation of young adults, millennials, born 1982-2003.

In 2012, one out of every four eligible voters will be members of this generation. More than 40 percent of millennials are nonwhite, creating the greatest racial and ethnic diversity in the nation's history. Twenty-five percent of them have an immigrant parent.

The generation was raised on messages of inclusion and equity and has translated those teachings into their political beliefs. A majority of millennials (54 percent) favor bigger government with more services, over a smaller government with fewer services (39 percent), almost the exact opposite of older generations' opinions on that choice. Sixty-nine percent of the generation is accepting of homosexuality and believe that a growing number of immigrants strengthen American society, in stark contrast to the beliefs of their elders.

While older generations are split on the question of government regulation of business, millennials come down squarely on the side of regulation by 51 percent to 43 percent.

While these attitudes suggest which way the debate over the country's civic ethos will ultimately turn out, it is the millennial generation's belief in consensus decision-making and pragmatic solutions to problems that hold out the most hope that the tone of today's political rhetoric will also change.

Millennials believe that collective action at the local level is the best way to solve national problems. Just as their parents set the rules within which millennials were free to exercise their creative energies, millennials look to the federal government to set national goals, even to establish mandates for required behavior. However, in the millennial era, the choice of how to comply with these requirements will not be determined in remote bureaucracies, but by individuals in local communities throughout the country.

In the middle of the vitriol of the current debate, it is easy to lose sight of the possibility of the dispute being resolved in favor of some larger and different national consensus. The millennial generation offers the country that hope. If America is to emerge from its current period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, it will have to look to its newest generation, for both the behavior and the ideas that can bring the debate to a conclusion that the country can support.

Follow Michael Hais and Morley Winograd on Twitter here.

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on August 29.

Yesterday, Kevin wrote a post that carefully and thoroughly proved that Generation Opportunity--at first glance, a non-partisan, non-threatening organization targeting youth to engage in positive change--is a sham.

To summarize, Generation Opportunity created a Facebook page titled "Being American" complete with random, non-descript photographs, encouraging young people to like the page just like they'd like apple pie, and then once it reached about 600,000 likes, they began to introduce their "non-partisan" organization.

I think the thing that strikes me the most about Kevin's post after some reflection is that Generation Opportunity--and by association, conservatives/Republicans--is admitting that it can't attract young people to its movement on its own merits. Basically, this means that The Right acknowledges that it needs to hide in the American flag like a Trojan horse in order to build any momentum among young people.

All the research that supposedly signals a conservative swing within the Millennial generation? It's misleading. And the very act of hiding behind "being American" and the "non-partisan" label to keep young people from knowing what your organization actually advocates points to an admission that youth aren't buying what you're actually selling.

As a reminder, Kevin, in beating back some of Generation Opportunity's claims (that Millennials are big on tax cuts, hate government spending, are American exceptionalists, believe the national debt is the most severe national security concern, and support expanding domestic coal and oil), puts forth the more credible research from Millennial Makeover and Pew; it happens to show a different picture.

Millennials, also to a greater degree than members of older generations, have confidence in the federal government and are more likely to favor a clear, rather than ancillary role for it in American life. A decisive majority (64%) of Millennials disagrees with the statement, 'When the federal government runs something it is usually inefficient and wasteful,' while 58 percent of older generations agree with that harsh appraisal. Millennials are also substantially less likely to believe that the federal government should run only those things that can't be run at the local level (63% vs. 71%).

These more favorable Millennial Generation attitudes toward the federal government are not simply a matter of 'normal' youthful liberalism. Millennials today are far less likely than Gen-Xers were in the late 1980s to believe that the federal government is usually wasteful and inefficient (32% for Millennials, 47% for young Gen-Xers) and that it should do only what can't be done at the local level (63% vs. 76%) (Pew Research Center 2007a).

And when these patriotic Millennials, who like "being American" but predictably don't enjoy having conservative talking points shoved down their throats, begin to resist on that Facebook page, what happens? They are silenced, of course. How American is that?

Before 2004/8, Republicans believed--with some Democrats--that the youth vote didn't exist and wasn't worth worrying about. However, as the first Millennials began to vote for Kerry in 2004, overwhelmingly supported Democrats in their 2006 midterm takeover of Congress, and showed up to the polls en masse in 2008 to vote for Obama, the Right took note and understood the youth vote is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Instead of pursuing honest, genuine efforts to engage young people in the process and persuade them to think about moving to the right, however, they are apparently embracing cynicism, holding to stances and values that Millennials view as toxic according to the credible research. They hope that if they dress up these views a little bit, throw the American flag, apple pie--hell, maybe even some BBQ, fireworks, and a Main Street parade--at them, Millennials will bite.

What's that saying about pigs and lipstick again?

On the heels of my post yesterday asking if younger Millennials were "lost" amid economic turmoil, here's one proposed solution: embrace Millennial entrepreneurship.

"You have 77 million Gen Y-ers out there," said 27-year-old Scott Gerber, the founder of The Young Entrepreneur Council. "The reality is if you don't want a lost generation, you need to start thinking about the future."

[...]

Gerber and others like him think the traditional route to employment has failed their generation. "It's a scary moment we're in, but entrepreneurship can get us out," he said.

Forty percent of those in Generation Y, roughly defined as Americans born from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, envision starting their own business, and about 20 percent already have, according to a report published last month by The Affluence Collaborative, a research partnership.

"This is a generation of serial entrepreneurs," said Donna Fenn, a journalist who wrote "Upstarts!," one of the first books identifying the Gen Y entrepreneur trend. "A lot of them start businesses in their 20s and many of them don't think that their first business will be their last. They're addicted to creating things, to the startup phase. By the time they reach their 40s, they will have started three, four or five companies."

Many Millennial entrepreneurs and activists (including Gerber's Young Entrepreneur Council) are pushing for the development of a bill--the Youth Entrepreneurship Act--that would eliminate some barriers to young entrepreneurs starting new businesses.

One element would be a program to forgive student loans and debt for young entrepreneurs, which he says would address a major hindrance to recent graduates who want to set up their own shop.

"Now more than ever, with young unemployment being so high, we have to be educating people that youth entrepreneurship is a viable career path and not some renegade choice," Gerber said.

Aaron Smith, co-founder of another young advocacy organization Young Invincibles, is also working with Gerber on the Youth Entrepreneurship Act. He acknowledges that now is a tough time to get anything passed in Congress, but contends that a bill helping young entrepreneurs would give the government a good return on investment.

"Increasingly, Congress is looking at ways to create jobs at a relatively low cost," the 29-year-old said. "One of the interesting things about young people is that their barrier to starting a business is small, in terms of the monetary amount. We're talking only a few thousand dollars."

Unfortunately, Smith is right. This Congress isn't likely to be hospitable to this legislation, even though its passage could relieve some economic strife among many young people in the short-term, while spurring the kind of economic development we need to revitalize the economy down the road.

However, while Gerber, Smith, and their organizations rally support for the bill, Matt Segal and Our Time, another organization supporting entrepreneurs under 30, are working with consumers on the other end of things.

...[Our Time] recently launched a "Buy Young" campaign. The idea is to encourage Americans to support more than 125 member businesses, including discount luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, clothing company Karmaloop and dry-erase paint company IdeaPaint, by offering exclusive discounts on their products and services.

The companies are responsible for creating more than 7,000 jobs since they were founded, Segal said. Since the campaign launched, the website has received more than 30,000 visitors.

If we are going to find our way out of this mess, we need to foster an environment supportive of the innovation needed to move us forward. Kudos to Gerber, Smith, and Segal and everyone else involved in doing this work.

NPR is up with a piece this week suggesting that today's youth, many of whom have never known anything other than an over-saturated jobs market, are "lost."

As we discuss teen unemployment numbers--at last glance, 25 percent of teenagers were jobless--it might be easy to blow it off and assume that parents will take on the added burden. One expert explains why that's a narrow and faulty assumption.

"It's tempting to look at the teen unemployment rate and sort of shrug and assume that ... the only consequence is that maybe the parents are giving [teenagers] money to go out to the movies this summer instead of the kids earning the money themselves," Saltsman says.

But working a summer job as a teen is not just about earning extra spending money. Saltsman says it's also about learning skills so you can become a good worker later in your adult life.

"The risk is that if [teenagers] miss out on [the summer job experience], they become part of this lost generation of teens who never had a chance to get a foothold to take that first step on that career ladder," Saltsman says.

While the lost paychecks are compiling every day, another, often unlooked component of this crisis is the lost opportunity for young people to create and develop a pool of skills for future employment.

As this reality sets in, teens are becoming desperate. There haven't been any riots yet, but young people are going to alarming ends to pay for college and to pay back student loans. One high school student from the District of Columbia describes what he's noticed among his peers:

Jacquan Clark, 16, would have liked a job this summer, but he says the competition among his teenage peers is brutal.

"It's like crabs in a barrel," the Washington, D.C., resident says. "We're trying to all get jobs, but we're also pulling each other back because we want the jobs."

The more I read stories like this, the more I find the notion of cutting services to be ridiculous. What will our government's inaction on behalf of today's young people cost us tomorrow? It's frightening to think about.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

Some Cleveland-area businesses, officials, and citizens were frustrated in June when what was believed to be a flash mob disrupted an arts fair in Cleveland Heights. Take a peek:

Officials estimate that nearly 1,000 youth showed up spontaneously. Apparently there were random fights (though little information about these fights is provided in either the video or the Cleveland Plain Dealer's account).

This event, along with other alleged violent flash mobs, spurred Cleveland city council member Zach Reed (pictured, right) to introduce an ordinance criminalizing the use of social media - Facebook, Twitter, etc. - to organize crowds.

Under existing law, any member of a flash mob can be charged with disorderly conduct or other offenses carrying jail if there is a disturbance. Reed's legislation would have added a misdemeanor charge for summoning a crowd through social media. A first offense carried a $100 fine.

Reed said the new measure moved beyond "antiquated legislation" that never imagined social media.

To his credit, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson vetoed that legislation this week, noting that while he is sympathetic to it's goal, the ordinance was not narrowly tailored enough to pass constitutional muster.

Reading about this on the heels of reading an articulate post by Sam DuPont at NDN - which calls for more examination of how social media can enhance civic engagement and social capital, I'm thinking about this flash mob issue in a few ways.

First, Reed's proposal to specifically criminalize social media-induced flash mobs is ridiculous. The last thing we need is another petty law on the books that we ask police officers to enforce, especially when we already have laws that address the issue. If a large group of people convenes and is hellbent on disrupting an otherwise peaceful event with violence, then the laws should be enforced. Some comments from festival attendees actually suggest that the Cleveland Heights PD efficiently defused the mob.

But instead, Reed - while admirably looking to solve the problem - throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Reed's proposed ordinance is far from being narrowly tailored. An Ohio ACLU official points out that the law could penalize innocent citizens; should two or three friends agree to meet up somewhere to talk, dance, listen to music, or whatever, and several others show up and cause problems, the two or three friends would bear the responsibility under this ordinance. In fact, what Reed proposes would have criminalized the actions of those young people abroad who used social media to gather and rally against their oppressive governments and in support of democracy. Effective government can't simply pass a broad, sweeping law and - voila! - expect results.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem to be solved when people congregate with the intention of disrupting a community. However, the question Cleveland and its suburbs should be asking is not "How are these youth organizing," as this legislation does, but "Why?" I wonder if it has something to do with 25 percent of teenagers in this country being unemployed? Perhaps many youth have nowhere left to gather, other than 24 hour Wal-Marts?

What is this subculture resisting? Perhaps it's not the suburban couple or family, but a society and community that seems to have forgotten about them?

I hope Zach Reed reads Sam DuPont's blog post. DuPont doesn't view social media as a menacing threat to society. Instead, he suggests that our communities and young people could benefit from a leveraging of these technological tools to increase social capital.

[I]f this generation is to rebuild American social capital, it needs fora in which to connect, build bonds, and establish the mutual obligations of social relationships. While the primary causes Putnam points to are immense, historical shifts, the secondary causes can be largely boiled down to the resultant decline of membership in general community organizations: churches, Rotary clubs, PTAs, etc. It's hard to imagine most of these organizations making a powerful comeback among the Millennial generation, and we're left with the question of where, exactly, Millennials will come together to build social bonds.

Another cause Putnam identifies as contributing an additional 10% toward the decline in social capital is "suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl." This trend has reoriented American communities away from the neighborhoods, downtown areas, corner bars, and public squares where social capital was once forged, to a landscape dominated by highways and strip malls where the closest thing to a shared public space can be found in the Caverns of Walmart. And so, in addition to the evaporation of civic groups, our shared physical spaces are also disappearing, and the question of where social capital can be created in the 21st century becomes still more confounding.

As you've no doubt guessed by now (Sorry this took so long. Actually, I'm not sorry at all. Brevity is for cowards.), the point I'm driving toward is this: with the decline of community organizations and associations, and the disappearance of shared public spaces, I look to new network technologies to bridge some of those gaps, and help create the shared public spaces of the 21st century.

Perhaps instead of fearing and resisting social media and flash mobs, the local government in Cleveland and its suburbs could make an effort to learn about and embrace these phenomena, while also trying to understand how to improve youth quality of life in the area? Yes, cities like Cleveland and the suburbs have lots going on and many priorities in these tough times, but ignoring youth issues and rejecting their culture is not effective problem-solving, it's sinking like a stone.