On the flip side of this, ever seen the 1980s movie Teachers? A major plot point of the movie was that inner-city students in the 1970s and 80s were graduating

On the flip side of this, ever seen the 1980s movie Teachers? A major plot point of the movie was that inner-city students in the 1970s and 80s were graduating high school being functionally illiterate. That was a real thing. The universal adoption of information technologies like the smart phone has definitely not been the utopia many of us thought it would be. HOWEVER, there is no such thing as an illiterate teen any more. For what it's worth, I think that's incredible progress for society as a whole. Now we have to figure out how to provide universal quality education and prevent ignorance and misinformation from spreading. This is a different challenge that we weren't expecting to have to address. Hopefully in 20 years we'll have addressed this issue as well and look back at the 2020s and be amazed that there were so many climate science deniers, flat-earthers, etc.