Elk jaar publiceerde Beloit hun mindset-lijst over de (Amerikaanse)18-jarigen die nu beginnen werken of naar het hoger onderwijs gaan. Ondertussen hebben ze een eigen website, speciaal voor deze lijsten.
Enkele voorbeelden uit de nieuwe lijst voor dit jaar:
- Hybrid automobiles have always been mass produced.
- Google has always been there, in its founding words, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”
- Email has become the new “formal” communication, while texts and tweets remain enclaves for the casual.
- Four foul-mouthed kids have always been playing in South Park.
- Hong Kong has always been under Chinese rule.
- They have grown up treating Wi-Fi as an entitlement.
- “No means no” has always been morphing, slowly, into “only yes means yes.”
- Cell phones have become so ubiquitous in class that teachers don’t know which students are using them to take notes and which ones are planning a party.
- Their parents have gone from encouraging them to use the Internet to begging them to get off of it.
- If you say “around the turn of the century,” they may well ask you, “which one?”
- They have avidly joined Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione as they built their reading skills through all seven volumes.
- Kyoto has always symbolized inactivity about global climate change.
- When they were born, cell phone usage was so expensive that families only used their “bag phones,” usually in cars, for emergencies.
- Playhouse Disney was a place where they could play growing up.
- Surgeons have always used “super glue” in the operating room.
- Fifteen nations have always been constructing the International Space Station.
- The Lion King has always been on Broadway.
- Scotland and Wales have always had their own parliaments and assemblies.
- At least Mom and Dad had their new Nintendo 64 to help them get through long nights sitting up with the baby.
- First Responders have always been heroes.
- Sir Paul and Sir Elton have always been knights of the same musical roundtable.
- Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have always been members of NATO.
- TV has always been in such high definition that they could see the pores of actors and the grimaces of quarterbacks.
- Jones and Mr. Smith have always been Men in Black, not their next-door neighbors.
- Their proud parents recorded their first steps on camcorders, mounted on their shoulders like bazookas.