The most physically demanding summer job I had when I was a student was scooping ice cream in the kiddieland section of an amusement park. You're on your feet the whole time, when there is a rush on you cannot take a break, and you have to be nice to some truly obnoxious people.
A friend of mine was a store manager in a chain of wine stores for while. He said his worst employees were the young ones, he could not rely on them to show up for their shifts nor even to call to let him know when they weren't coming. But the starting level jobs at his store only paid minimum wage. Funny how people swear up and down about supply and demand, yet when they can't find employees to fill jobs at the minimum wage, it never occurs to them to up the ante. Seems like a peculiar kind of economic blind spot.
The lady who ran that ice cream concession stand at the amusement park complained bitterly every chance she got about how impossible it was to make any money, and yet, every summer for years, she bid and won the right to run that concession (it was a summer only amusement park).
So I'm a bit biased. When I hear that kids today don't want lousy jobs at lousy pay, I can't help but think, good on them.
As for the ones with their faces glued to their mobiles' screen, that is a mystery to me. I am finding the interweb less and less interesting as time goes on, and it is starting to remind of network commercial TV more and more. At the moment, except for reading novels, I am most interested in long-form podcasts, where ideas can be fleshed out more completely. Sometimes forums such as this one are interesting, but I'm finding that they are tending toward the short quick-hit sound bite form more and more, without much new info or interesting observation.