Americans 65 and older aren’t right about everything, but a new study shows they tend to be more informed than other generations about the news.
Millennials correctly recognize Martin Luther King Jr. more than any other generation
Millennials won a battle; grandparents won the war
We can officially call the silent generation (ages 65 to 89) the smartest generation. The silent generation correctly answered more questions about the current affairs for a recent Pew Research study, though they didn’t answer every question more correctly than others.
While the silents are more likely to understand the sum of current news, it’s those damned millennials (ages 18 to 29) who hold the brass ring for being the most correct on a single question. Millennials most correctly recognized Martin Luther King Jr. more than any other generation (93 percent), including his own living peers (he would be 86 this year).
Only 89 percent of the silent generation, baby boomers, and Generation X correctly recognized the civil rights activist who is celebrated with a federal holiday every year.
Which generation most closely reflects your news knowledge?
Here is what each generation most correctly answered, as compared with others, but you can take the news quiz and see how you fare against your peers.
- Gen-Xers (ages 30 to 49) most correctly answered the unemployment rate from 2009 to 2014 (around the time of the Great Recession).
- Baby boomers (ages 50 to 64) most correctly recognized Nobel Prize–winning human rights activist Malala Yousafzai, even taking a 10-point lead over millennials, of whom she is one.
- Silents most correctly answered the current state of US-Cuba relations.
Who deserves the most slack for getting the answers wrong?
Probably millennials, a multitasking generation who tend to have less attention span with which to consume the news.
Who fared the worst?
Gen-Xers.
You can check out exactly how each generation fared, per question:
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