“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me” is a cute saying but an obvious miscalculation of the power of words. It's all in the name. Names are used to ­categorize all sorts of things, especially people. The generation name game is yet another attempt to fit people into a mold: those from the Silent Generation are beatniks, Baby Boomers are hippies, and don't ­forget the Generation X slackers. Individuals are ­defined by these labels.

Those currently attending high school will find that they have been typecast into a cohort born between 1991 and 2000. Until recently, they had been called the Post-Echo Generation, as ­people who only faintly remember the Post-Cold War era. However, the media, for some unknown reason (perhaps a cruel joke), has started to refer to this group as the “YouTube Generation.”

To put it mildly, teens have expressed a distaste for their new name. This is understandable since, really, who would want to be associated with a website whose poster child is a fat man gesticulating wildly to Romanian techno? Names conjure an image. With a name like the YouTube Generation, what will these coming-of-age teens be known for? Poor spelling?

William Strauss and Neil Howe are credited with developing generational theory and have written ­several books on the subject, including Millennials Rising, which follows the graduating class of 2000. They argue that teens today are actually recasting the image of youth. These “millennials” hold themselves to higher standards; they are less aggressive, rude, and sexually charged than previous generations. If Strauss and Howe are correct, then it is difficult to see how the name YouTube Generation could be applied to the same group of teenagers.

If someone were to judge a generation's character by the content on YouTube, he would surely weep for the future of humanity. All degrees of crude pervade every pixel, in the videos as well as their comments. The most viewed, top-rated videos are an amalgamation of mind-numbing stupidity. Granted, there are ­exceptions (those four guys dancing on treadmills: sheer genius), but this is a sad minority.

It is difficult to find a positive side to this unfair epithet. However, a new perspective is revealed when examining what YouTube actually represents. It has been said that the Internet is to our generation what television was to the Baby Boomers, but with a significant difference.

While the advent of television spurred cultural ­conformity, the Internet teaches diversity. On the Web, creativity and originality are glorified. No website is a better example of this than YouTube, where anyone and his pet hamster can attain fame. YouTube represents everyone – the guy across the street, a cousin in Tennessee, a pen pal from Bangladesh – coming ­together to utterly humiliate themselves. Social ­theorists call this process “globalization.”

Whatever way you look at it – this somewhat romanticized interpretation, its literal representation, or Strauss and Howe's analysis – it appears that the name YouTube Generation is here to stay. If you find this ­depressing, take heart in the fact that as a member of this group, you are entitled to drown your sorrows in as many hours of pointless video footage as you want.