This sounds a little rose tinted to me. I personally think for simpler tasks, much more information is available these days compared to older times. There's many resources on how to grow a potato (and other things) on the Internet.

For other tasks, some things have simply become a lot more complicated to work on. Electronics were a lot simpler in older times, for instance; swapping out a surface mount quad flat package will require a lot more "finesse" than swapping out a 1960s capacitor. Cars too have gotten more electronics and software. Despite this, there are definitely still people that have the skills to repair modern electronics and cars. (I will say that these types are often hampered by manufacturers that seem hostile to the idea of users being able to practically repair devices, hence the "right to repair" movement being a thing these days.)

I'm convinced there's more noise but I'm not sure how much of it is really more signal. Consider growing a potato and searching for that term on Google. I'm betting a lot of articles are going to be somewhat junky SEO spam that's repeating the same few pieces of info. Whereas if you were to go to a garden center or library, and find a book or pamphlet on growing a potato, that's probably going to be great information and very comprehensive, and covers a lot more than those short articles ever do. This generation wasn't without good information. They were consulting things like the Haynes manual for their cars the same as your mechanic does today, or reading on the pros and cons of different truss designs from books available in the hardware store.

Information about 'how to grow a potato' and a season or two of experience working out the kinks of growing a small crop of potatoes on available land near you are two very different things.

You can still learn these skills. In fact, the wide access to knowledge should give you enough to learn these skills without ever having to ask someone else. The larger reality is a lot of these people don't need to learn these skills, so they won't, for various specific reasons.

Same way you can ask a ton of people gen X and higher how to open a Word document, many of them don't know. They don't even know where to get the information besides asking family and friends, because that's their modus operandi. Tons of human support still has a job only because these people can't figure things out without another person helping them.

Every generation currently alive has a large degree of learned helplessness. The areas where they are helpless just vary.

The other limiting constraint is the capital needed to engage in some activities that were comparatively inexpensive a generation or two ago.

If you go a few generations further back, your ancestors lived in crushing rural poverty but literally hand-made most of the things in their own house, with the rest produced by local craftspeople; grew/raised or gathered/hunted most of their own food; made their own clothing starting from raw materials; etc.

Your buddies today have dramatically greater material wealth due to worldwide supply chains and mass production, but don’t know how to turn an unshorn sheep into a blanket or sweater or build walls out of mud and sticks. Today it’s no longer worth even fixing most stuff because the labor costs to do anything as a one-off are prohibitive compared to buying a new one from a streamlined (capital and energy intensive) factory.

I dunno. I’m early millennial and, due largely to money reasons, I’ve done the following myself in past 12 months:

- re-graded slope of dirt in back yard (by hand, oof), trenched and added irrigation (to code), and seeded a successful lawn

- rebuilt upper valve train on my minivan (5 failed hydronic lifters)

- reframed my garage, which had massive termite damage and wall was 1.5” out of plumb, roof sagging badly

- wired new 60A circuit for EV charger (to code)

- excavated (by hand) and replaced 10’+ section of sewer lateral

- rebuilt washing machine pump, added dynamat sound deadening so quiet when on calls in garage

- re-heeled my wife’s shoes

- designed / built custom bunk/loft/desk for my sons’ shared room (Baltic birch, flat packable, surprisingly beautiful)

- re-roofed and reflashed chimney to fix leak (then re-drywalled 1/5 living room ceiling, skip trowel texture)

- abs so on…

Not trying to humble brag, but I hadn’t done a single of those tasks before (except framing, drywall, electrical, plumbing, which I taught myself in last decade). Push comes to shove, people can get a book from the library.