When was the last time parents lived in the same world as their kids? While it may happen rarely, it is definitely not regular.
For instance, I am a high school senior. I have had a PC since I was in 6th grade. I program, talk to my friends (both RL and Internet only) over email, have premarital sex, deal with issues like homosexuality, AIDs, the shadow of Columbine, and watch DVDs. My parents got a TV around 6th grade. They fixed cars or typed, felt telephones were too impersonal, dealt with the Vietnam War, and flower power. VCRs weren't around yet.
And yet they think they went through the same experience I did. Add to that the fact they were a jock and a prep and you better believe they had a different experience than I.
It is called the Generation Gap and its huge. The Roaring 20s generation had many differences with the WWII generation. The WWII generation didn't get the Baby Boomers. They don't get Generation X and the current generation. In the last 3 generations, TV, computers, CDs, the Internet, the pill, cell phones, pagers, rock n roll, punk, rap, techno, the electric guitar, civil rights for blacks, spaceships, and nuclear bombs, were invented. Each has changed how we look at life. And still parents believe they went through the same things as their kids.
My parents are bright. My father was a jock, but at Boston Latin (a magnet school in Boston), and both went to college. Yet, they have little to no chance of understanding what my life is like outside our home. And this is how it works. Add to this that many parents don't want to understand, but only wish to direct their children into the way they want them to grow up, and they use when I was your age to try to direct their kids towards their desired traits and all it shows is the parent's cluelessness.
Sorry for the rantlike writeup.