I am grateful to have two children who are passionate about social causes, and politics. They actively engage in trying to change the things they care about---and spend time with friends, with learning, with sports, & being creative----They are both adults now but have had the same attitudes from their early years.
I also see many of their friends who also share beliefs/desire for and willingness for action...(environmental, civil rights, poverty....)----As a 60's "child" myself, who still believes that change does and will happen, I feel GOOD about most young people. (& I get to see them as a nurse, in camp, in school...)---And I remember the "lazy" ones of my own youth (TV, pinball, junk food, bullies, etc...)
However, that being said, we Are too comfortable as a nation, and we deserve much of the criticism we receive from the rest of the world. It is hard to rouse the comfortable, and that has always been true. And the comfortable like to maintain comfort, sometimes at the expense of the "others" by blaming them for their lousy luck/poverty/despair/conflicts...
We have never had our cities destroyed by bombs, our nation taken over by a zealot during times of social strife, we are still a very young land...
And continue to treat the people who were here when we arrived very badly...