I mean...based on what? We have more stuff, that's for sure. Our healthcare (when we can afford it) and nutrition is probably better and more consistent. Are we any happier? I'm not sure.
I honestly believe that if you remove social media from the equation, there is zero doubt that modern life makes you happier. There are so many awesome things you can do nowadays with modern tech, you have practically unlimited entertainment. But now you also have on-demand comparison, and as they say, comparison is the thief of joy. The sooner society realizes that social media is the REAL thing that is making people unhappy, the better.
"...you have practically unlimited entertainment."
This is a tangent, but I feel like I enjoyed things more when I didn't have practically unlimited entertainment. Video games before the digital era with Xbox Game Pass, PSNow / PSPlus, etc were limited to a few games that you bought and really invested in. Videos before streaming where you were limited to what was sitting in Blockbuster or in your physical collection. Music was limited to what the radio was playing (which you had no control over) or what you had in your tape/CD collection. Because physical media was something of an investment, it sort of led to a sort of 'automatic curation' that's much harder with having just about every game, movie, tv show, and album at your fingertips.
Maybe it's an age thing, but now I have 'back catalogs' for all of this stuff, and there's a constant feeling of 'missing out' if you choose one thing from your unlimited supply over another thing. It's exhausting.
