WaPo – Are college students “snowflakes” — triggered, traumatized and all together too delicate for the real world? Or are they apathetic — so unconcerned that they can’t be bothered to purchase stamps to send in their absentee ballots?
The two characterizations of young Americans are in conflict, observed Melissa Hagan, an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. Her research has led her to believe that neither captures what’s going on in the minds of young people. Their intense reaction to political events runs contrary to the charge of apathy, she said, while the emotional trauma they report should not be dismissed as hypersensitivity.
