Elders have turned the byways of Millennials into cocktail jokes. Time magazine featured them as the "Me Me Me Generation." 

Yet, today's generation isn't all that different than the "Me Generation" responsible for the "Me Decade" in the 1970s. Yes, the gadgets are spiffier, but the self-absorption is old school. 

Some claim the emerging generation of Americans is hyper-narcissistic and unable to escape a life wedgie that traps them in their parents' house and a low-paying job, if they are employed at all.

Those who have persevered and obtained a college education, even a graduate degree, are floundering in a restructuring economy with specific needs and little patience for indulgent behavior.

But The Atlantic suggests many post-war generations have displayed eccentricities, bordering on neurosis. Woody Allen, after all, is a symbol of his generation's disquieting anxieties.

Instead of caricaturing or stereotyping a generation, it might make sense to talk with its members to see what worries young people. Those who have bothered have learned young people fear a future with less promise than their parents. Like many older adults, they are confused and disoriented about the rapid changes swirling around them, even as they enjoy the fruits of cool new technology.

Young people today have grown up in a world where digital media and mobile devices seem the norm, not the latest, coolest thing. The Great Depression, the advent of indoor plumbing and the dawning of the television age sound like fantasies, not history.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck says direct attempts to alter attitudes toward an adversary can backfire, intensifying a dispute and making people defensive. But persuading people that individuals can grow and change is a successful psychological intervention to reduce conflict.

Speaking at "The Science of Getting People to Do Good" briefing, sponsored by Stanford's Center for Social Innovation, Dweck cited her earlier research that showed people who believe their adversaries can grow and change are "less likely to seek retaliation than those who believe people's human traits are fixed."

"Mindsets about whether people are malleable or fixed," Dweck said, "play a major role in the perpetuation of hatred and the unwillingness to compromise."

To prove her theory as it applies to the unstinting Israeli-Palestinian conflict, investigators working with Dweck undertook four studies. The first involved a nationwide survey of Israelis, which showed a correlation between a belief in people's ability to change and a willingness to compromise, even on issues such as West Bank settlements, to reach resolution with the Palestinians. 

As reported by NPR, many workers making a decent living worry about sliding out of the middle class by losing their job, facing a medical emergency or trying to pay for a child's college education.

In fact, 40 percent of respondents to a quarterly Heartland Monitor Poll this month said paying for a college education for a child is now an unrealistic financial expectation for them.

The survey of 1,000 middle-class adults nationwide indicates Americans have adopted a more dour mood about the economic direction of the country. Only 29 percent say the country is headed in the right direction, down sharply from 41 percent recorded in the same quarterly poll last November.

President Obama's approval rating has dropped, but not as low as that of Congress. Obama's approval rating has slipped to 46 percent from 54 percent in November 2012. Congressional approval ratings didn't fall that much, largely because it is hard to fall out of a basement window. Its April 2013 rating of 3 percent is down from 4 percent last November.

By far, the biggest concern is losing a job. More than 50 percent of respondents said that is their greatest risk to dropping out of middle-class status. Unexpected illness or injury to a family member is viewed as the next greatest risk at 28 percent. A death, property damage or divorce are seen as economic threats, but to a far lesser degree. 

A study by a video technology company shows the chances of a video going viral are determined within the first three days of its launch.

Video technology company Unruly conducted a study that shows the "viral peak" of a brand video campaign occurs on the second day after it is posted. 

"We found that the first days following the launch are key to both the video's short- and long-term success," says Ian Forrester of Unruly. There are strong correlations between shares achieved in days one to three and all-time shares.

Unruly based its conclusion on examinations of 200 of the most shared branded videos in 2012. It has been tracking online videos for the last seven years on what it calls the Unruly Viral Video Chart, capturing 329 billion video streams.

Data indicates that 10 percent of video shares occur by day two after it is posted. Twenty-five percent of shares occur within the first three days. It takes three weeks to reach 50 percent of a video's shares. 

Brands that are serious about maximizing the viral spread of their video content, says Sarah Wood, COO and co-founder of Unruly, need to promote them as soon as they are posted to ensure what she calls a "viral cascade in the crucial first days of a campaign."

Unruly's business model is to help clients promote social media video advertising campaigns so they engage target audiences on mobile, tablet and smartphone devices. It also has a tool to rank the "shareability" of video content to advise clients on the value of promoting it.

Source: A Quarter Of Branded Video Shares Occur Within The First Three Days Of Launch (http://www.unrulymedia.com/article/24-04-2013/quarter-branded-video-shares-occur-within-first-three-days-launch)

Because of the September 11 attack, I delayed launching that phone survey for a week. In my opinion, people didn’t want to respond to survey questions. They wanted to be with family and friends.

At that time, I hoped I would never have to delay a research project due to terrorism again. But this week, I did.

By 11 a.m. Monday, April 15, I had approved three questionnaires for online and phone survey research.

By 4 p.m. that day, I had called my clients, telling them each survey would be postponed for several days because of the Boston terrorist bombing. No one hesitated. Everyone agreed.

Assumption 1: Newspaper readership is for an older market.

Newspaper readership does increase with age. People age 55 years and older (84%) are more likely to read the newspaper than those under age 55 (63%), but a significant portion of all age groups still read the newspaper, including those age 18 to 34 (52%). When it comes to local news, newspapers are still top dog.

Assumption 2: Digital communication is for the younger market

Getting news online declines with age, but older residents are not computer illiterate. Websites and other online media are among the most important information sources for those age 18 to 34 year (53%), but one in four of those Medicare eligible go online for news.

Perhaps this puts digital media into perspective. Apple was founded in 1976. If you were age 30 and bought one of the first Apple computers, you would be 67 years old today. A lot of time to get computer savvy.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's puts Wagner's message another way — we need to move beyond teaching students skills to get a job and prepare them to invent their own job.

Teaching students to become the next Steve Jobs is a tall order. "Few young people will become brilliant innovators like Steve Jobs," concedes Wagner. "But most can be taught the skills needed to become more innovative in whatever they do."

Trial and error, a tried-and-true hallmark of success, isn't on most school curriculums, Wagner claims. "In most high school and college classes, failure is penalized," he says. "But without trial and error, there is no innovation." Wagner points to Amanda Alonzo, who teaches at a San Jose, California high school and has mentored two Intel Science Prize finalists and 10 semifinalists. Alonzo says, "One of the most important things I have to teach my students is that when you fail, you are learning."

Wagner adds, "Students gain lasting self-confidence not by being protected from failure, but by learning that they survive it."

Emerging teaching models, he explains, now center on exploring problems or opportunities, often in team settings. Classes are more hands-on, where students are creators, not passive consumers of facts.

Learning facts remains, but takes more of a secondary role. "We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over," Wagner says. "Because of this, the longer kids are in school, the less motivated they become. Gallup's recent survey showed student engagement going from 80 percent in fifth grade to 40 percent in high school."

A new study from the Pew Research Center paints a startling picture of how the news media is continuing to shrink. Not only have the number of reporters and news outlets shrunk, so have budgets.

Some companies have adapted to the change by using more dubious techniques, a few going as far as to offer vacations to reporters in exchange for coverage. However, many companies filled the void by providing factual information through legitimate means.

One example the study sites is Kaiser, which now produces Kaiser Health News. Articles by the organization are published everywhere from NBC.com to the Washington Post. By providing content that is factual and interesting, Kaiser has created a way for it to talk directly to consumers using traditional media as its megaphone.

We’ve mentioned before the importance of self-publishing online and this study confirms our recommendations. Companies more than ever need to tell their own stories.

University of Maryland quantum computing students have created a sophisticated, hard-to-fathom bracketology system that boils down to using a ytterbium ion like a coin flip to pick winners. Its ion coin flips predict the University of Pittsburgh, the eighth seed in the Eastern regional, to win the Big Dance. Unfortunately for the Panthers, they lost their first tournament game to ninth-seeded Wichita State.

Nate Silver, the legendary numbers cruncher in the world of politics, predicts Louisville has the highest probability of any of the 68 teams in the tournament to win at 22.7 percent. Indiana is next at 19.6 percent, followed by Florida at 12.7 percent, Kansas 7.5 percent and Number 1-ranked Gonzaga at 6.1 percent.

Silver has street cred because last year he predicted Kentucky would win the Big Dance — along with just about everybody else who follows college basketball and noticed the starting five were likely to be top picks in the NBA draft.

Because March Madness is a major national distraction that saps productivity from America's offices and factories, marketers sniff an opportunity. A number of brands have created their own bracketology to engage consumers. One investment analyst compared picking stocks to picking NCAA tournament winners, which may not have been the best of ideas.

In a great piece on Ragan.com, Michael Sebastian describes how Clorox used "comic relief to entertain moms during their 'potty breaks.'"

Toilets are places people often desperately need, but cannot wait to escape after flushing away their day's toils and troubles.

To combat this banal reality, the folks at Clorox Toilet Products created The Clorox Lounge, a social media hub that Sebastian says featured contests, giveaways and coupons, as well as dispensing, literally, some potty humor. There were 10,000 registered lounge members, he noted.

In a bit called Last Comic Sitting, mom and dad comedians squared off with their best bathroom zingers. Viewers voted for the best tasteless jokes, culminating, Sebastian said, in a live comedy event hosted by Sherri Shepherd, who is co-host of "The View."

Another gambit was called Ode to the Commode, a reworked Facebook page that featured humorous (though hopefully not scandalous) pictures sent in my Clorox users, infographics on potty-related topics such as the Toilets of Government and ongoing conversations about subjects such as the pros and cons of toilet seat covers. Sebastian said Ode to Commode drew 200,000 likes.