I think there is a trend towards reducing dependency bloat, at least in some circles. For example, the main React package has had this much recursive dependencies throughout the past few major versions:

  react@15 — 20 deps
  react@16 — 6 deps
  react@17 — 4 deps
  react@18 — 3 deps

The latest version of vite (a webpack replacement that's been gaining in popularity) has 14 recursive dependencies. It could be better, but it's still a significant improvement over 300+ package monstrosity you get by combining webpack with everything necessary to reimplement what vite is doing.

If you pick your packages carefully (for example, looking for alternatives this one ↓ instead of the much more popular react-router), it's not as bad as it used to be.

https://github.com/molefrog/wouter