Thank yo to all the level headed people who have responded so far. Normally, I'm the last person to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I feel obligated to defend my generation. First and foremost, we are not all a bunch of fatasses. I notice a lot of overweight little kids, but that disappears once they get to high school. You either join some activity, or you have no friends. When I walk down the hall, I don't see a bunch of fatties, I notice tons of kids my age who are in phenomenal shape. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of two kids I know who are actually fat.
As far as academics go, I have a 4.9/5 GPA, and I am barely in the 65th percentile for my class. Kids today are willing to throw themselves in a million different directions because they have to. What high schooler in Illinois doesn't dream of getting into U of I? If you want to get in, you'd better be in the top 10% of your class, be up to your neck in activities, and have aced your ACT. My dad did next to nothing in high school, and went to U of I twice (failing out both times).
Granted, we're not perfect. We complain too much, we're short sighted, and occasionally reckless, but teenagers have always been like that. Also, I can say with a fair bit of sureness that most kids my age would not want to run 24km to and from school everyday, but if you older guys think that your generation would have openly embraced all that running, with more than the exception of the occasional Gerry Lindgren type, you are out of your mind.
Sure, some of us are lazy, but kids have always been lazy. Remember that generation of kids that went to the streets of Haight-Ashbury to smoke pot and do nothing? How'd they turn out? My dad didn't do much in high school besides smoke pot and fail classes, and now he's the most responsible, hard working person I know. Kids mature. They always have.
There, that ends my rant on why the sky is not falling and never was.