The quiet generation: are today's young people too quiet--and too online--for their own good?

• Author: Friedman, Thomas L.
• Position: OPINION

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I recently visited several colleges, and the more I'm around this generation of college students, the more I'm both baffled and impressed.

I'm impressed because they're so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I'm baffled because they're so much less politically engaged than they need to be.

They're not only going abroad to study in record numbers, they're also building homes for the poor in El Salvador or volunteering at AIDS clinics.

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I saw young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Others channel, their national-service impulses into programs like Teach for America, which sends young teachers to schools in poor neighborhoods.

It's for all. these reasons that rye been calling them "Generation Q"--the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of the term, quietly pursuing their idealism.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good. I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit, and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving them. If they're not spitting mad, then they're just not paying attention.

When I visited my daughter at her college, she asked about a terrifying story that ran in The Times on October 2, reporting that the Arctic ice cap was melting "to an extent unparalleled in a century or more." She wondered why none of the candidates were talking about it.

Generation Q would do itself, and America, a favor if it asked every candidate who comes on campus...