Yeah, "young people" are dumbasses, but for some reason we give much credance to their survey answers.
the question I have is, where do they get the idea that this is acceptable? What are they teaching in schools?
The topic at hand, paranoia, or at least distrustfulness, is practically defined by having an external locus of control.
While we're on the topic of trust, kids today aren't exactly treated with much trust. Are they even trusted to stay at home unattended without getting themselves in some accident? And then there's the whole system of school, which is specifically founded on not trusting children (to self-educate, which is what they're genetically programmed to do...). The implicit message they're receiving is that people are guilty until proven otherwise.
I'm sure you could poll a cohort of <21s to tell you that thermonuclear obliteration is 'acceptable', if only because they've never actually thought about it or the consequences. That result wouldn't tell us the world at large is heading straight for nuclear war, it tells us our respondents are morons.