It seems that many if not most pundits reckon the current economic downturn to be a generational event. I have no opinion about that. That aside, here is a NYT guesstimate [hey, the spellchecker was okay with guesstimate!] of the effect the economy with have on the OMG generation. It is more retrospective than predictive, but in general, the reporter says that youth will stay home longer (OMG!), get spottier educations, become more civic-minded, and have more interest in what's really important.

So there. Go write novels for them.