I'm just skeptical anytime anybody yells crisis, then backs it up with anecdotal third party stories. It's easy to be a pessimist. The media loves stories about how bad things are now, and how good things used to be. So helicopter parents are ruining a generation? Who's to say the current generation of kids aren't the happiest ever?
As the Rolling Stones said, "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!"
It's not anecdotes. Julie Lythcott-Haims was the dean of Freshman (among other things) at Stanford for many years. She had her fingers on a wealth of data about Stanford Freshman. By many, many measures Stanford freshman are a remarkable bunch. But there is concrete data about their overall well-being that would trouble any thoughtful person. There are similar data from other elite universities.