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Volunteering has been on a slight uptick, she said, but that’s coincided with schools starting to require it for graduation. Last fall, 81% of college students in a long-running national survey said their most important life goal was to become financially wealthy — the highest percentage since the survey was first offered in 1966.

‘Unfortunately our generation cares more about reality television and going to restaurants they can’t afford than sitting down and doing some career planning’

“There are both negative and positive trends,” Prof. Twenge said. “Focusing a little more on the negative trends isn’t necessarily bad, as it helps us figure out what needs to change. But the positive trends are important, too.”

At the same time, there’s also been little evidence to prove that members of Gen Y are very different from their predecessors when it comes to their work values or how achievement-driven they are, added Harvey Krahn, a professor of social structure and social policy at the University of Alberta, who, with colleague and psychology professor Nancy Galambos, has conducted longitudinal research of Canadian young people on this topic. The difference they face, he said, is a more fragmented labour market.

Michael McFadden, 25, had to manage his expectations upon graduation from Carleton University’s business school a few years ago. After he returned to the Ottawa area from a year of study in England, he worked for two years as an independent financial advisor because he couldn’t get an entry-level job at a bank. And so he headed west to Olds, Alta., where the prospects were brighter.

“My hopes were to be making six figures six years out of school in the finance industry,” he said. “Sounds silly but that is what I always had in my head. Right away I knew in Ontario this wasn’t a reality.”

He sees truth in the stereotype of young people being overly expectant, basing their future hopes on the success of parents who grew up in a vastly different world.

“Unfortunately our generation cares more about reality television and going to restaurants they can’t afford than sitting down and doing some career planning,” he said.

Having coined the word “millennials,” and thus holding a sort of stake in their well-being, Mr. Howe says he’s been dismayed at the way Gen Yers are being disparaged.

“You have this generation that’s trying to do everything right, trying to play nice and not arguing back and they get unmitigated hell for it,” said the historian, economist and demographer who serves as president of LifeCourse Associates in Great Falls, Va., a strategic planning consultancy based on generational research.

The animosity can be explained by an innate competitiveness, he said — “there’s always been an old buck, young buck competition — that’s not generational, that’s just a fact of life.”

And as they get older, Gen Xers join the pile-on, he said.