I’m Gen X, and many of the discussions I have with Gen Yers fall right into your belief vs. opinion statement. I had a discussion recently with two intelligent Gen Y professionals. The discussion centered around the environment and the impact of large corporate big box stores (e.g. Wal-Mart). I was proposing that there were potential environmental benefits from these types of stores, as well as economic ones. The conversation quickly declined, and rather than have a discussion about the issues, I was dismissed as being a mouth-breathing meat eater.

This is surely not indicative of a whole generation, but there does seem to be a large number of people who embrace concepts like the Iraq war “sucks’, and global warming is a problem, without ever even trying to dig deeper and investigating the political, economic and social motivations behind the government and corporate actions.

But what Gen Y is missing, at least in the Western world, is the ability to communicate with people, face to face – to express those opinions in the streets not just the blog; to ask someone out by actually talking to their face, not texting their phone; to express dissatisfaction with a top-down boss in their office, not tweeting it secretly back at your desk.

We’re raising future generations that are great at sending messages, but inept at communicating.