Actually, Technology Hasn't Really Stopped Millennials From Driving

Evelyn Blumenberg, the chair of urban planning at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, doesn't buy the theory that Millennials are traveling less because they're using technology more. She's seen the recent reports making these claims, but she's also seen a strong case study in the form of her own teenage children. "They are completely reliant on their phones," she says. "But they also travel a lot."

Personal anecdotes aside, there's also the data. As part of a massive study on Millennial travel behavior published last year [PDF], Blumenberg and collaborators analyzed national travel behavior from 1990, 2001, and 2009. They concluded that the recent recession explained most of the decline in youth travel, and that the only effect technology seemed to have — if there were any effect at all — was to increase it.