Here is an example of tying consumption of things like McMansions or skinny jeans to certain generations:

If there’s one thing today’s young people know it’s this: size doesn’t matter.

From watching movies on cell phone screens to driving micro-cars like the Honda Fit, less is more with this generation.

Known as millennials, people born in the years just before and after 2000, believe in small carbon footprints and short attention spans. They don’t watch television episodes, they watch YouTube clips. Even email is too cumbersome for them. Millennials prefer to communicate with more instantaneous social media like Facebook chat and text-messages.

Compare this with people from Gen X and older and you see how wide the size-gap has become.

We Gen X’ers wore baggy jeans, flannel shirts and puffy hair. Many (too many) of us have oversized televisions and drive Hummers as big as tanks. We live in McMansions and super-size our lunches while today’s younger people wear skinny jeans, live in small apartments, and eat more salad.

We had record and compact disc collections with gigantic stereo speakers. They have iPod Nanos and ear buds.

The conclusion of the argument is that doing more with less is probably better on a crowded planet. Comparing the consumption of a McMansion to a tiny house (a comparison made a few paragraphs later) is one way to measure things: one house is bigger than the other and requires more resources. But, how do you compare a McMansion to an iPhone? The McMansion might require more resources (though all that goes into making an iPhone is more hidden) but can’t the consumption of an iPhone still be a problem (if younger adults are spending hours and hours with the device – and at least some are)? Plus, if you consume smaller objects, theoretically you might do it more often and collect a lot of stuff in the long run, even if it is more in the form of digital files. And then skinny jeans versus baggy clothes? Is this more about aesthetics rather than the size of consumption objects?

All that said, making sweeping claims about consumption patterns across generations can be difficult. We might be on safer ground by arguing that younger generations today are buying different kinds of products (digital, in particular) and may not be valuing “traditional” American consumption (cars, bigger houses).