There’s a kind of person who might say, “Hey, they were teenagers—and what do teens usually agonize over?  Maybe they didn’t feel popular enough.  Maybe they just felt left out.”

Granted, the student protests and other social turmoil of the late 1960s were often initiated by the sorts of “brainy” and “artsy” young people who had typically found themselves marginalized by Eisenhower-era America.  But we should bear in mind that the teenagers who went on to become activists were not especially interested in sock hops or pep rallies or street-racing hot rods.  It’s also worth noting that the movement they started was quickly joined by others in their age cohort from all sorts of other backgrounds—including some of the most popular ones in their classes.  Could so many of them all have felt left out?

On the other hand, if they didn’t, then what did make kids with such cushy lives and such bright prospects so down on their world?