It's disturbing to think about how there are now legal adults in America who live in a society where pretty much everything is the same or worse now than when they were born. Even looking back at the 1990s, you could at least say processing power and internet connections sucked, but by the mid-2000s we reached a point where the internet and computing power had advanced to a pretty good place. Pretty much all noteworthy changes that have happened since then have been for the worse. That's not normal and it shouldn't be seen as such, but it's been going on long enough that it just is seen that way by many.
People can talk about "mythologized pasts" and whatnot, but life actually was better when you could go out in public and talk to people, as opposed to everyone just awkwardly pulling out their phones to browse Twitter and Facebook. There actually was such a thing as freedom back then. Most importantly, there was actually such a thing as hope.