Prom season is just winding down and across the country parents are still trying to lift their jaws off the floor due to the costs of this annual rite of spring. The good news is that costs have come down when compared with recent years but that doesn't mean they aren't still high. At a meeting earlier this month, the CEO of a company told me his daughter wanted $100 to have her makeup done for her junior prom!

Summer is just around the corner, and the vast majority of young people will find themselves out of school with months of time to fill before they have to once again set foot in a classroom. In previous decades, most would get jobs or help out around the house, but the job market-particularly for entry-level gigs-has dried up and young people are finding it harder to land jobs that were once reserved for teens.

Just when companies are starting to understand Millennials, a new generation is emerging. Members of Generation Z, sometimes referred to as "Generation Edge," were born in the mid-'90s to late 2000s. They differ significantly from the previous generation: they're the first generation born into the digital world, and they're the most diverse and multicultural of any generation in the U.S.

Much ado has been made about the declining use of Facebook among teens. Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. found 13- to 17-year-old social-media users on Facebook slipped to 88% in 2014 from 94% in 2013. Piper Jaffray found Facebook use among teenagers aged 13 to 19 plummeted from 72% in spring 2014 to 45% in fall 2014. Forrester Research found nearly 80% of 12- to 19-year olds visit Facebook at least once a month but only 28% "use it all the time." Niche says 87% of high-school seniors have adopted Facebook and 61% use it daily.