MANY OF US can remember where we were when we first heard about the idea of the yuppie. I was 11 years old, sitting in the middle of the back seat of the car, when my mother swung around suddenly from the front seat.

“See those people?” she said, pointing at pedestrians walking briskly and bearing briefcases. “They must be yuppies. Are you going to be a yuppie?”

Thankfully I wasn’t. But the latest demographic acronym to emerge from the marketing ether is scarcely more inviting. According to a report published this week by Oxford’s Social Issues Research Centre, today’s young people between 16 and 24 are best characterised as Young Experimenting Perfection Seekers — or yeppies for short. The yeppies are not single-mindedly materialistic enough to be yuppies.

Instead, they believe that true personal fulfilment comes only after years of anguished experimentation. As a result, they feel entitled to behave like fickle consumers in everything that they do.

Just as they might browse the shops or flick through the pages of a lifestyle magazine, the yeppie likes to shop around when choosing jobs, careers, homes, identities and relationships. By trying on an assortment of different jobs and lifestyles, the yeppie wants to be flexible enough to change direction or to hit the reverse pedal when things do not work out. And he or she is happy to postpone all adult decisions until completely satisfied that all the options have been exhausted.

The drift towards life shopping, according to the researchers, can explain the rise of the singleton. In 1971, the average age at first marriage was 25 for men and 23 for women. By 2003, this had increased to 31 for men and 29 for women. The growth of the yeppie also helps to explain the “boomerang” generation of young adults who, after a spell in the cold world of adulthood, head straight back to the family home. In 2004 around a quarter of women between the ages of 25 and 29 and two fifths of men within that age group were still living with their parents. By 2012, according to the Social Issues Research Centre, there will be an increasing acceptance of prolonged adolescence; it will be entirely normal for people — even those in their late twenties — to remain ensconced in the family home.

Small wonder, then, that yeppies find it so difficult to settle down or to put work into building a career. For all their vaunted nimbleness, the Achilles heel is their inability to grow up and knuckle down. Faced with any decision whose outcome is uncertain, they find themselves caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Unrealistically high expectations are also a burden. After all, why throw yourself into anything when something better might come along at any moment?

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden