I think the point here is less to justify than to understand. And I'd be looking at my youth with rose-colored glasses if I said there wasn't tremendous peer pressure and incentive to conform in many circumstances.

But I'd say the biggest difference, one to which Sahil makes a glancing reference and is perhaps the hardest to really appreciate, is the presence/absence of social media. In the college atmosphere of our youth, whatever one said or did was limited in scope and consequence, and quickly forgotten in any case. Social media is like a megaphone that can be heard around the world and which transcribes your every utterance into a public record, and nowadays you walk around with it on your person lest you miss all of those precious moments of impulsive spontaneity. And even if you're not inclined to use it yourself, everyone else has one too and will be happy to use theirs to helpfully immortalize your most ill-considered utterances if it will earn them sufficient approbation from their peers. I don't know about you, but as willing as I was to speak my mind to a room full of individuals, I can easily see myself becoming paranoid and terrified into inaction in the presence of what has basically become a crowd sourced, privatized surveillance state.

So even though I may not like what is going on right now, I can definitely understand. And that's what's important. Looking down our noses at the younger generation and lamenting our cultural differences isn't going to help solve the problem. Understanding the environmental factors whereby such differences arise from an otherwise shared experience of humanity, will.