New York Times columnist David Brooks recently (February 2018) went around the country interviewing students at some of the most prestigious campuses in America. He admits that the students he met represent only "a tiny slice of the rising generation," but, still, their comments are striking. Notice how Brooks concluded his article about this series of interviews:

I came away from these conversations thinking that one big challenge for this generation is determining how to take good things that are happening on the local level and translate them to the national level, where the problems are. I was also struck by pervasive but subtle hunger for a change in the emotional tenor of life. "We're more connected but we're more apart," one student lamented. Again and again, students expressed a hunger for social and emotional bonding, for a shift from guilt and accusation toward empathy. "How do you create relationship?" one student asked. That may be the longing that undergirds all others.