...i think we all suffer from positive confirmation bias as we get older, when it comes to the perception of the younger generations. As a gen X'er i distinctly remember being told as a teenager that "we were all soft and didn't know what hardship was because we didn't have to grow up with food rationing"; that we were rotting our brains with television, and were selfish because we were always talking to our mates on the house phone all evening, and overly opinionated whenever we disagreed with our elders cos we'd just read something in a book or whatever.
i do think we can make a case that current media consumption crowds out book reading for everyone, from every generation, which unfortunately means even more young people grow up without actually ever reading a book, so that's gonna affect the ability to focus for long term, and children are indeed reading less than their peers did many decades ago. Additionally, there's the endless barrage of self-serving behaviours promoted on the internet, but i see that trend reflected in every group, from boomers to gen z, so that's not a generational qualifier.
There's some good quotes going down the ages here:
