No, I don't see it. I do see an exacerbation of class differences due to lack of contact among the educated and the undereducated, and a difference in understanding and use of technologies.

The former will find an outrageious expression in the behavior of children, who don't know how to act because a) they're children and b) their examples come from adults who don't know how to act themselves. (Example at the library, mother to child: "Watch your goddamn mouth.")

The latter is a normal outcome of new technologies during any historical period. The young embrace them, and the old tend to feel left behind and idealize their own youth. Although communication with kids is complicated by the fact that the new technology primarily affects communication, the only thing new about this is the extent to which we are informed about it. We would surely have seen the same thing during the period leading up to the First Wolrd War, what with the telephone and the phonograph and the horseless carriage and all, except we didn't have the dubious blessing of pollsters back then to tell us what we think every 15 minutes.

The thing about technology: Sometimes older people aren't open to innovation, but sometimes technology isn't developed with older people in mind. To take texting as an example: If texting is to be an equal-opportunity activity, the phone manufacturers are going to have to make those little keyboards and screens bigger. I can and do use it now, but I can see a time when arthritic fingers and fading eyesight will make it impossible with the current tools.

We also have the interesting phenomenon of segregation by age. When children are put in enclaves where they encounter one or two adults (usually women) no older than about 50 and lots of people their own age, and retired adults live in "retirement communities" designed to shield older adults from the exuberance of youth, no one ought to be surprised that the generations don't understand each other. I grew up, as I suspect is true of many people, in neighborhoods inhabited by many different ages. We disagreed about things, as youth and age always will, but we understood each other. You can't understand people you seldom see, let alone speak to.

If older Americans think there's a generation gap, we have the tools to bridge it: listen to kids, and talk to (not at) kids regularly. (My grandfather used to say we have two ears and one mouth, so we should take the hint and listen twice as much as we speak.) We who are older have more experience and a responsibility to educate, best done by example, that doesn't go away. Youth's opinions have as much validity within the range of their experience as ours have. One earnest question, "Why?", followed by an attempt to understand and relate to the answer, will do wonders. Sometimes they'll even listen to "When I was your age" if it's accompanied by, "we thought X, but you're talking about Z. Why do you think it changed?"

Parent/child relationships don't really count in "generation gap" discussions, because those are complicated by long-standing personal dynamics that have nothing to do with age or generational differences in the larger sense.