A good read in the Economist in which different pieces of research are combined showing that, well, the kids are allright. “Today’s young people are held to be alienated, unhappy, violent failures. They are proving anything but…”

Some examples:

• In 2002 just 13% of German teenagers had never had an alcoholic drink; by 2012, that figure had risen to 30%.
• In 2007, 111,000 children aged between 10 and 17 were convicted or given a police caution for a first offence in England and Wales. By last year, that had fallen to just 28,000.
• According to one British government survey, those born in the early 1990s are less rude and noisy in public places than previous cohorts were at the same age.
• Cigarette smoking among the young in America has become so uncommon that more teenagers—some 23% of 17- to 18-year-olds—smoke cannabis than tobacco.
• According to data from the European Centre for Disease Monitoring and Control, across the European Union (EU) they are the only age group to be diagnosed with fewer sexually transmitted diseases in recent years.
• America’s teenage pregnancy rate is half what it was two decades ago.
• …

The conclusion?

If the change is lasting, some of the verve of the past 50 years of youth culture might be lost. But that does not make the young boring. To concentrate on the things they do not do misses the amount of work they put into getting other things done, from the maintenance of their social networks to the various crafts with which they occupy their free time. The proliferation of innovation in areas from writing apps to mixing music, from mashing up media to popping up restaurants, shows that they are as capable of creativity as ever. For all that young Berliners joke about gentrification, they admit that the city’s romanticised past is an illusion. They do not want to bring it back. They want to build something better.