This Christmas, kids in America are being buried in gifts. The sheer number of adults in the population continues to grow faster than the number of children. The ratio of gift givers to gift getters is skewing towards the gift givers. It's another face of the generational labor shortage. The stimulation from gifts actually causes chemical changes in the brain that creates a viscous cycle.
Stimulation causes a requirement for more stimulation.
The theory goes on to suggest that kids on the receiving end of the overabundant gifts will begin to measure their intrinsic self-worth in terms of the amount of money that is spent on them. Whether or not you buy this scrooge-ish view of the holidays, it underlines an important fact. Not only are workforce demographics in flux, the newly minted worker has a radically differing experience of childhood, adults and the underlying reasons for work. Workers are becoming scarcer and different. The requirements for increasing doses of stimulation is an argument for using the web as a recruiting tool.