From a friend:

A common topic of discussion among business people and managers is the "Gen Y Management Problem". Look in the business books' section of a book-shop or an on-line book-store and see the increasing number of books with titles like "Thriving (and surviving) with Generation Y at Work".

Two interesting suppositions were made by some business owners and managers.

(1) Gen Y is averse to conflict. When conflict arises at work, or in a relationship, or in a social grouping, Gen Y is more likely to get another job, or break off the relationship, or find a new group of friends, rather than trying to resolve the conflict through negotiation, compromise or some other form of inter-personal transaction. This is analogous to playing games on a PS2 or an XBox - if you get killed in Quake or Doom, or are losing the game, then you press the Play button and restart the game.

(2) Gen Y has difficulty in handling situations when things go wrong. Technology is expected to work. Mobile phones, iPods, Notebooks, play-stations, broad-band connections are expected to always work. Similarly, things are expected to go right at work and in relationships. When they don't, Gen Y looks for something new - a new job, a new relationship, a new iPod. One manager in a large multi-national in WA made the comment that in the past, his employees would put up with things when they went wrong, for example, a conflict at work, a missed promotion, an unhappy customer, a mistake made by the employee, and would only consider leaving the job if the cumulative effect of a number of things going wrong or ambitions not being met got too great. But with Gen Y, his observation is that a single thing going wrong is enough for a Gen Yer to quit and look for another job; of course, with present labour shortages, this is a more viable option than it may have been in the past. That manager felt that his Gen Y employees need to be told that it's ok if things go wrong - that's part of living.

It seems that supposition (1) may be a symptom or a corollary of supposition (2).

Do the above observations fit in with the emerging debate about childhood and how children are being denied some aspects of childhood in present Western society?

PS: Gen Y ~= anyone under 30.