You can't define an entire generation

One rare exception is CYP Now's own Positive Images campaign. Another is the work of two individuals from the Netherlands, Jeroen Boschma and Inez Groen, who work for Keesie, a communications agency. They portray young people as "smart, social and super-fast" and have tagged them Generation Einstein.

Boschma opened a recent conference in the UK and explained the thinking behind Generation Einstein. It has been shaped by the 24/7 commercialised information society, rising levels of prosperity and relentless advertising - which has made young people extremely media-smart and very sceptical about messages from others. The authors' background analysis covers health, political participation and family life, though they arrive at very different conclusions from those that others typically reach. They give their most concentrated attention to education. They argue for something called "new learning", based on principles that learning is subjective, needs to be rooted within experience to be meaningful and it must be lateral, not linear: Generation Einstein has already learned to deal with multiple forms of discontinuous information at the same time.