Ann Fishman, a generational marketing consultant in New Orleans, also has found that baby boomer and Gen X parents are much more likely to spend money on their children than parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War II.

Today, she notes, young people are known for their collective billion-dollar spending power, much of it thanks to money they get from their parents.

"They have a different idea of what's necessary," Fishman says of young people. "For them, a cell phone is normal; an iPod is normal; a Game Boy is normal."

Some see the heightened expectations setting up inevitable disappointment.

"There are a lot of young people hitting 25 who are making, say, $35,000 a year, who expected they'd be millionaires or at least making six figures," says psychologist Jean Twenge. She's a professor at San Diego State University and author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before."

They're also entering adulthood with more college loans to credit cards debt.

No wonder, Twenge says, we hear so many 20somethings talking about the "quarter-life crisis."

"We're telling them they're special and they can do anything they want — and then they're growing up and finding out that's not true," Twenge says.

Tim Barello, a 24-year-old New Yorker, agrees that his generation has gotten caught up in wanting "more and more and more."

Having grown up on Long Island's wealthy North Shore, he thought he'd arrived when he got a job as a publicist and was able to rent an apartment in an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan.

"To be completely honest," he says, "I don't even appreciate everything I have sometimes."

"Yes, I have a nice apartment, a great job, a great degree, great clothing. But I feel empty inside rather often."

So he's changing his focus and this week, began classes at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts to pursue his dream of acting — even if it means giving up the cushy life.

"There is so much more to life," he says, "than materialistic possessions."

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On the Net:

UCLA survey: www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/norms06.php

Pew Research Center: people-press.org/