I disagree. My parents generation took photos on point and shoot cameras. They waited a week or longer to get them developed, never really knowing what they took.

These photos ended up stuck to pages in an album to be brought out occasionally, or they were really good, in a frame placed on display. They have pictures from the 80s still out on their mantle.

Maybe once a decade they would go to a studio like at Sears and get a pro to get the whole family together. These would be edited, but also very rare.

Even the thought that they would be taking pictures for anyone else to ever see would rarely cross their minds, let alone the need to make major edits. Regular people simply didn’t have this vanity or need for approval when taking pics like the smartphone era

My parents' generation also took photos but if something was off, they'd ask our photographer relative to edit them. This was over 20 years ago. At least some part of the population did know what photo editing was and did it, either themselves or with the help of someone else.