Those children of the late 1920s through the early ’40s, members of the so-called Silent Generation, were shaped by war and the Depression and grew up to be the diligent, go-along-to-get-along careerists of the ’50s and ’60s — picture Peggy from “Mad Men.”

“The parallels with the Silent Generation are obvious,” Mr. Howe said. “There has been a recession, jobs are hard to get, you can’t take risks. You’ve got to be careful what you put on Facebook. You don’t want to taint your record.”

Those children of the New Deal, epitomized by the low-key Warren Buffett, “didn’t want to change the system, they wanted to work within the system,” Mr. Howe said. “They were the men in the gray flannel suits. They got married early, had kids early. Their first question in job interviews was about pension plans.”

That analogy only goes so far for a generation predisposed to making Vine videos of themselves doing cartwheels over their cats. (Let’s not forget that the Silents, too, had no shortage of mavericks who made noise on the world stage — Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley and Andy Warhol, to name but a few.) As for the gray flannel suits, parents may not want to send their teenagers off to the tailor just yet. The Sparks & Honey report argued that “entrepreneurship is in their DNA.”

“Kids are witnessing start-up companies make it big instantly via social media,” said Andrew Schoonover, a 15-year-old in Olathe, Kan. “We do not want to work at a local fast-food joint for a summer job. We want to make our own business because we see the lucky few who make it big.”

Which leads to a final point worth mentioning about the Silent Generation. As Mr. Howe pointed out, it was not just the most career-focused generation in history. It was also, he said, the richest.