"Young Fogies"

Britain’s young people are the "best-behaved generation since the rebellions of the 1960s."

16:38 15 June 2016

A recent analysis titled The New Young Fogeys has claimed that millennials are increasingly well-behaved and smarter about the decisions they make.   

 

It added that young people today are more clean-living than any generation since before the 1960s partly due to the lasting effects of the Great Recession – austerity, stagnant wages and job insecurity, among many others.   

 

Robert Joyce, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: "The youngest adults were the most hard hit on average by the recession," 

 

"From peak to trough, once the recession hit, the earnings in inflation-adjusted terms to young adults fell by more than 10%, so that's a really big change over a short period of time."

 

Education and improved parenting have also contributed greatly to the shifting of behaviour.

 

Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said that the millenials were raised by overprotective parents helping them make safer choices.

 

"This is a generation who was raised around over-protection from their parents - in some good ways and some bad ways.

 

"So on the good side this is the first generation to ride around in car seats, to not walk home from school by themselves, to have more organised activities rather than free play in the street.

"So they're used to having these very structured and protected lives, and they take these messages about safety a little more seriously than previous generations of young people did."