People tend to be more educated and more empathetic. Violent crime is significantly down to the lowest levels ever, especially compared to the 70s.

What sucks is that some people are becoming irrelevant: old age, certain political beliefs, certain religious beliefs, etc. They are burning down the house on the way out. Also the house of cards that is the economy that was always going to collapse one day is now collapsing.

Socially we’re better off. Economically we’re worse off. I suspect that we go back to a mainly urban and more sustainable form of living like prior to the baby boom.

Awareness. Things used to be much worse. Lack of medical knowledge, sanitation, food safety, early warning of natural disasters, and rights.

We’re more aware of it. We constantly drink from a firehouse of outrage and anxiety. Yea technology

Both.

The top 0.01% are able to exert more and more influence over the world, and are using it to concentrate wealth even more into their own pockets.

And regular people have access to smartphones that allow them to communicate worldwide instantly. The cost of more basic smartphones has plummeted, so more people have more cameras connected straight to social media.

But it’s also that some things are genuinely worse. I am fairly sure that there are still more slaves alive today than at any other point in history. However as a percentage I believe it’s lower, it’s just due to the world population being so high.

People today tend to fixate on the things that are out of their control. Perhaps it’s because we have lost our coping mechanisms. Perhaps it’s because they never learned any. We live in the most technologically advanced point in time we have ever known. Few of us need to go out and till the earth to grow our own food. The majority of us don’t have to physically work as hard as previous generations. Adults and our children find their enjoyment and existential dread by watching tiny screens filled with useless entertainment. Maybe things are fine. We just make shitty choices about what to do with our time, and what we give our attention to.

Some things are slightly shittier, some things are way shittier, and a lot of things are a lot better. What do you mean specifically?

Politics and the Supreme Court have gotten a lot shittier since 2016 (like a steep decline, rather than the slight decline before).

The wealth gap has been getting shittier since the 70s. Wages haven’t kept up with productivity, while living expenses have only increased.

The housing market is shitty if you’re young or don’t have generational wealth.

Technology and medicine have gotten way better over the last ~100 years.

General consumer safety has gotten way better since the 50s.

Literacy levels and the rate of high school graduation have gotten way better.

Climate change is killing the planet. Deregulation is making climate change worse. Green energy isn’t coming fast enough.

Capitalism and specifically the notion that corporations have a duty to the shareholders has made companies and products shittier, but TVs are really cheap, and computers are really fast.

Robotics has gotten incredibly advanced, as has AI. Whether that’s shitty is pretty much up to opinion. I’d say it’s neutral, and depends on how they’re used.

Speaking of which, war was already horrifying, and now robots have made it vastly more horrifying. I don’t see any way that’s going to stop.

Food has become either really nutrient dense and amazing or really calorie dense and horrible, depending on how much money you have.

Speaking of money, there are a handful of people who have like half of the money. Maybe the guillotine went out of style too soon.

Video games and movies basically just look indistinguishable from reality now. And deep fakes are about to make it a lot easier to create that kind of realism.

For the most part, high speed internet access has slowly been getting better and better, both in speed and availability. Surprisingly, it’s stayed about the same percentage of the median income while doing so.

Streaming services have gotten so shitty it’s unbelievable that they’re still in business. But piracy has been making a comeback, and self hosting pirated content has gotten a lot easier. Physical media is also making a comeback.

Bigotry has gotten worse as a problem, but not worse in terms of percentage of people who are discriminatory. It’s just that the extreme bigots have basically taken over one of the political parties. (I mean, it basically was the party of bigotry before, but they had the decency to be subtle about it.) The younger generation can hopefully fix that problem as they enter voting age.

That’s all I can think of for now.