The simple fact that you know a "vast" majority of sixteen year old's leads me to believe that you are at an age where you could be familiar with a vast number of sixteen year old's. If you're a teacher then that ad hominem argument clearly holds no water.

Instead, I would point to empirical evidence, not scientific, but merely from my own experience growing up, that what I knew then and what I know now and what I continue to learn isn't something I would personally brag about. Perhaps a few students took a particular interest in current events and local, national and international politics. But I, and most of my cohorts simply weren't familiar with things like the Geneva Convention at the age of 16 because we weren't instructed on those particular topics just yet. For most normal students it takes time and lots of it to cover in-depth, all of the materials a well informed individual would need to be familiar with to be considered well informed. At such a young age, a Sophomore or Junior in high school simply hasn't had the time to learn about every topic under the sun that an aged veteran of historical and social studies would have. Not to say that most adults are there either, but if we're going to live in a democracy, more specifically a republic, we have to give the people some say in who it is we put up there on Capital Hill and in the White House.

Now you bring up an interesting point that these teenagers you know are better informed than their parents. It makes me wonder how you know these teenagers are so much more informed than their parents? If you are a teacher as I suspect you are, it would make sense that you really took the time to get to know these students, whereas you might only get 1 or 2 hours a year to get to know their parents. So whose making the sweeping generalizations again? This of course is all just speculation on my part so if I'm wrong I really wouldn't be that surprised. I'm extrapolating as much as I can from only two sentences after all. Thanks for the discourse!