I believe this to be a combination of the interwebs, a bad economy, and food pyramid.
The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, before the Great Recession hit. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today’s generation is literally going nowhere. This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about.
…
In the most startling behavioral change among young people since James Dean and Marlon Brando started mumbling, an increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver’s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D.M.V. with newly minted licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008 — even before the Great Recession — that number had dropped to 65 percent. Though it’s easy to blame the high cost of cars or gasoline, Comerica Bank’s Automobile Affordability Index shows that it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early 1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn’t get out of line until a few years ago.
I have noticed the driving thing. I have nephews and nieces that had no interest in getting behind the wheel. I got my permit the day of my 16th birthday and my license as quickly as I could schedule the test. I would say I don’t get it but, I sometimes work from home, I shop from home, I get movies through my remote or PC, I pretend I like my friends through the fake smile of facebook. Its a pretty comfortable existence. When they have home delivery of Big Gulps and Big Macs, I may never go out again.
