Median incomes in the UK have doubled in that period, after accounting for inflation. Access to nutritious food has been revolutionised. The produce available in the shops is incomparably better. I didn't know what a mango, guava, persimon, plantain or dozens of other exotic produce looked like until the 90s but now they are commonplace and affordable. TV was a small, hot grainy screened little box. The way I kept in touch with the RPG gaming community was fanzines through the post. Almost nobody went on international holidays, now you can get Ryanair tickets for a few quid. Buying products remotely meant printed paper catalogues.

I was very lucky to have access to a computer running CP/M and MBasic on my dad's computer back home, but even as a computer science student in the late 80s I had no computer. All my programming was done on minicomputer terminals or lab PCs you had to book in advance, so I only had access for a few hours a week.

For women, oppressive gender bias and overt harassment and abuse was endemic in many spheres of life, I saw people get away with it. Being homosexual was still a career ender for many people. Open and accessible communications technology, and rising living standards has I think been crucial to connecting people and fighting these prejudices. I still remember the gleeful way US politicians and religious figures spoke about the impact AIDS was having, 'punishing' gay people. They thought it was funny. It fundamentally changed my attitudes to a lot of things, socially and politically. I'm still a fiscal conservative and believer in liberal capitalist economic freedoms; but I have no trust whatever of conservative social instincts anymore, that died 35 years ago.

If you took an average modern teenager and had them live in the 80s for a while they'd be horrified.

> For women, oppressive gender bias and overt harassment and abuse was endemic in many spheres of life, I saw people get away with it. Being homosexual was still a career ender for many people.

Ah yes indeed - there has been some genuine progress here

> If you took an average modern teenager and had them live in the 80s for a while they'd be horrified

... but this would really be just an aversion to change, right? Does the average modern teenager have any more fun? Have more joy and less sorrow in their lives? I'm not convinced (unless they're gay)

The contention was that there have been no meaningful improvements in our lives from technology. I just don't think that's the case, we are much better off in real terms, and that many of the improvements we do have were at least in part facilitated by that technology and associated quality of life. That's all. People still have problems to deal with, for sure.

"so I only had access for a few hours a week"

That must have been pretty rough - I was a CS student from 84 to 88 (Scotland so 4 years first degrees) and we had pretty much unlimited access to kit (HLH Unix minis, BBC micros, Atari STs) and we all got keys so we had 24 hour access.

If there were any issues with access to stuff, being based in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, we'd just go to one of the many excellent pubs in the vicinity.

There were labs with BBC Micros that were more accessible, but they only had Basic. If you're learning Pascal, C, Modula 2, etc that's just not good enough. There was a Unix machine but I didn't do any courses that required access to it.

Grew up in the 80s in Easter Europe under stringent economics where food was ratioed and such and yet I think out childhood was better than that of children today. There were plenty of things that sucked, especially for the parents and comparatively to today we had nothing and yet... I think something went horribly wrong despite the ‘prosperity’ we’re enjoying now.

I think your point of view is mostly driven by nostalgia.

I agree there are some things about today's society that are terrible, but a lot of those problems, we bring down on ourselves.

It's hard to tell when nostalgia is real or not, and basically any comparison to the past can be dismissed as nostalgia, or it could be true but one thing strikes me as clear cut is that there was a lot less stress around. Personally I'd swap out abundance over stress at any time.

I don't think that's true. My parents are far happier than I am. They have a far more optimistic view of the world than I do because they've had it far better.

What makes them happy that is unavailable to you?

They own their own house. They could easily afford to have children. They could easily find well paid work outside of big cities, set up their own business. They didn't need higher education to get a well paid job. They didn't need to work nights and weekends for 15 years straight on side projects just to get by (like I did). They have more friends and their friendships are stronger too because they don't have to keep moving countries/cities to find jobs that pay enough (and with the right tax regime) to support a basic lifestyle. They didn't have to change jobs all the time to keep up with inflation. Their jobs were meaningful and useful to society (not some financial schemes). They're part of their community. They are less stressed. They feel free to express their views with their friends and colleagues. They felt that they could trust the government for most of their lives. Taxes were lower since inflation has since pushed everyone into higher tax brackets and the taxes actually went to useful projects, not into the pockets of big corporate executives and financiers.

Nowadays, every worker is subsidizing corporations; subsidizing their own slavery within the corporate system - Sometimes unwittingly, sometimes against their will because in many countries, retirement contributions are compulsory and deducted from incomes; this money is 'invested' into corporate stocks and straight into the pockets of big executives who get huge bonuses thanks to the rising stock prices; driven by all the big pension funds propping up stock prices using workers' money which was taken out of their salaries without their explicit consent.

I’ll take renting an apartment instead of owning over dying (or just fighting) in war.

Lack of stress perhaps? More harmony and less of uncertainty and hopelessness?

These are subjective and personal. What causes the stress? What caused reduction in harmony, certainty, hope?

Your parents probably lives through a transition from extreme scarcity to abundance. As scarce as things were for them in the 80s, they were probably at lot more scarce in the 50s and 40s. Maybe your parents didn’t experience that directly but their parents did for sure.

From our grandparents generation and before, a much higher proportion of them were directly affected by things like war.

If you’re lacking hope because you’re afraid of something like war, I would consider that a luxury compared to actually being in a war.

If the prospect of impending austerity or violence leads to more suffering than the experience of these things themself then I would not say that being at war or hungry is the worse situation. While maybe subjective and personal by some criteria, still real and measurable.

Peoples life satisfaction is U shaped, it tends to dip in middle age then increase later in life.