I think it's hard for parents to keep up with the kids. We're learning so many things, so much quicker than they are. Racial diversity growing By many social measures, the Class of 2000 differs little from any other teen generation deemed by society to be headed to hell in a handbasket - which is to say every generation in recent memory. The Class of 2000 is more racially diverse than any before it. Thirty-three percent of U.S. teens belong to minorities, compared to 28 percent of Americans of all ages.
Teens increasingly face cultural conflicts, sometimes within their own household.
Kauxiong Yang, a Hmong refugee from Laos, lives in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park. She flips through Vogue and Glamour magazines, listens to pop stars Jewel and Alanis Morrisette, and wears Gap jeans with the seams torn just so at the bottom. She also happens, at 17, to be married, common in Hmong culture but odd enough here that she initially kept it a secret from classmates after moving last year from California. She yearns to be a typical American teen. The minute I step into the house, I'm pretending to be someone I'm not.