The romance around travel and adventure has been around for centuries, if not millennia. The Homeric cycle has plenty of that, and other cultures have analogous stories. I think it's a young person thing, not a generation thing.

Travel for self-discovery has the well-understood problem that self-discovery is not about the places you go or things you do. It's about how you react and change in the process.

Hedonistic travel is fine and can be restoring, but pleasure only gives you insight into what you like, not how you handle life's challenges. The latter is where you actually find yourself. For that, travel is useful because it makes you uncomfortable, but first you have to seek discomfort.

How is that any different than the hippy, free love, counter culture of the 60's. People in every single generation have wanted to do that and many have. The only difference between your generation and all the ones of the past is you now have social media around to amplify and make you feel subliminally jealous of the ones who actually do it. You're a real live productive member of society, so why aren't all these people your age able to do it right /s?

It's also easy to look down on others from a position of moral superiority. Yeah, it's the same story, but why is the behavior so wildly rampant now when it wasn't previously? I seriously push back on the position that "nobody romanticizes it" - the self-made entrepreneur, the kid who backpacked around Africa for two years then started a successful NGO and now gets to meet celebrities every day (this is completely made up) - the point is, our culture DOES romanticize this, and frames it all in the context of "they followed their passion!" or some other baloney like that.

I have two kids, and the ONE THING I try the hardest to teach them is personal responsibility. Yet I recognize that generally the term "personal responsibility" is kind of used as a gatekeeping term against the poor and the young. Whatever their problems are, they are self-imposed as they lack personal responsibility. Sympathy, compassion, charity not required.

Every generation of parents is a generation of first-time parents. The best we can do is learn from past generations. I don't see any harm in identifying causes and effects of generational shifts in parenting style in order to better correct for the next round.