> yet somehow mankind has improved quality of life for so many

I think it would be hard to argue that Gen Z has a higher quality of life than Gen X

Gen Z has worked far less and is much earlier in that career than Gen X, among many other things.

Incomes for each income quintile at the same age shows Gen Z as having more income than Gen X did. They are also statistically much worse with money and expenses.

You can dig all this out of historical Census data. Find personal (or household) income by age group, do the same for each cohort over time, inflation adjust, and it's pretty clear.

So I can certainly argue they have higher quality of life than Gen X at each point in their lives thus far.

I think it's such a huge mistake to think "well, it's always been like that, this is just a continuation of what's been going on in recorded history." Especially when the data tells a very different story.

For example, just look at one metric: weight. Kids these days (and, obviously, adults as well) are overweight and obese in numbers that are off the charts (off the charts because you barely had any obese kids in decades past). They used to always call it "adult-onset diabetes", which now they prefer to call it Type 2 diabetes because you see so many kids getting it, which is tragic IMO. To be clear, I'm not solely blaming the childhood obesity epidemic on smartphones or social media - I'm just using it as an example of something that has changed for kids that we should be worried about, not just hand wave away as "Meh, adults have always bemoaned youth."

Rates of teenage depression, loneliness and anxiety have skyrocketed in the pass 15 years, and when you dig into the data it doesn't look like just a rate of diagnosis issue.

Teenagers themselves (as a group) are telling us they are significantly more unhappy than teenagers in years past. We should listen to them.

I think it's such a huge mistake to cherry pick one or two metrics out of hundreds to claim something, while ignoring all the others, especially since you had to go outside the topics in the thread so far to bring in your pet metrics.