The cool kids were once thrill-seeking kids like jocks or the well-dressed kids, and the self-expressed kids of today were once the band geeks, theater types, or crunchy-granola types.

Not only do parents provide the safe harbor teenagers need in an era of increasing violence and chaos, but evidence suggests this generation is more comfortable and trusting in authority.

They are still doing many of the same types of activities that they used to do, for example, passing a note in class. Now, they can text several people at the same time. The underlying urges are the same, what technology has done is allow them to be taken to a new level.

If you wanted to characterize what the 'cool' brands were for global teens 10 years ago, what they had in common was that a lot of them were from America.