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But with all their exposure to the entire world through technology, don't they wonder about the things they don't know? Don't they realize the appalling gap between the superficial images on their iPads and the realities behind those images? Don't they wonder where they are and how they got there?

Or is it that they're so smug and complacent that they fail to realize they're only one link in a very long chain?

Even if you write their banality off to narcissism, don't they know that they can't really "change the world" if they don't know squat about it?

But with all their exposure to the entire world through technology, don't they wonder about the things they don't know?....

The overwhelming percentage perceive and treat all these devices as appliances. One pushes a button and it works, most of the time. Tap or flip the switch and the light turns on, don't have to have an understanding of electricity or circuits to make it work. Eloi perception "it just is".

A mundane but common example is the posting of home made videos in social media. Almost all are in vertical portrait mode, even for scenes where a landscape mode is the better choce. All android and iPhones have the auto-rotate option, a simple radio button switch that apparently few bother to learn about. So a handheld device was vastly more potential computing power than the NASA projects of the 60's and 70's is reduced to being an expensive narcissistic Polaroid Swinger and a telegraphic Post-It note.

I shop a lot on Amazon for small tech items and parts not available in brick and mortar stores where I live and read the reviews and questions. All to often wasting time for the amusement they provide. It's a world of magpies out there latching onto bright shiny things. Reading anything beyond the limits of a text message or twitter remark apparently is beyond so many of them, never mind comprehension.

My millenial friends and relatives live in a bubble. It is a cultural bubble that separates them from older generations. Harry Potter, the twilight books and movies and zombie movies were popular in the 1990's and 2000's. These and other influences helped to create the happy feely imaginary world of the millenials.

Millenials see themselves as more calm and collected than prior generations. They are not crazy for drugs, alcohol and smoking and can accept random casual relationships with ease.

This is all a reaction to what was happening in the world in the 1990's and early 2000's. Millenails were brought up on video games and virtual reality. Millenials have never experienced a national draft, extreme poverty or deprivation and they see politics as an excercise in compromise with no black or white - only grey areas.

They have never heard of the Pol Pot killing fields and see no need to learn about the cold war, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the past. Common culture passes for an education among some millenials.

They have never seen large scale war or tragendy and feel immune to the possibility. Blame the TV happy talk news, blame the soap opera TV and Movies pushed by hollywood movie industry, just don't blame the parents. Unless you were living amish style - the kids were indoctrinated with the touchy/feely non-judgemental stuff that keeps them so artificially happy.