We are fine. You're just falling for the "*this" generation is different" fallacy. Look up some history if you think previous generations had it all sorted until the nasty internet came along and corrupted us.

I'm not saying past generations were fine. Every generation having problems doesn't mean the most recent ones don't.

What makes problems into disasters is denying that there is a problem until it is too late.

Past generations mostly tried (with varying success) to fix the problems in their world. Sometimes the past generations' solutions are good, like much of the world mandating 40 hour work weeks and public pensions and workplace health and safety and so on; other times even when the problem is real, the solutions are worse, like the US experience with prohibition.

But when problems get ignored, you get stuff like leaded gasoline, cigarettes, and asbestos being everywhere, the Irish potato famine, the dissolution of the USSR, and the 2007 global financial crisis.

Even if AI doesn't do what it promises, the internet brings with it even more globalisation, cheap labour that undercuts any rich nation for jobs which can be done on a computer (which we've already seen examples of, not just with coding but also call centres). Even if Musk's promised about Optimus remain as unfulfilled as whichever version of full-self-driving just got made obsolete, a remote-controlled android does much the same for manual labour. And the internet does enable much weirder warfare: our governments can blame hacks on whoever they like, but there is often no dramatic photo of something burning as a result, just a diffuse degradation of economic performance from fully automated scams and blackmails.

And that's without any questions about demographic shift and who pays for the current generation's pensions when they retire, and if this has anything to do with free porn and the state of online dating apps. And without personalised propaganda. Without your home surveillance system (or robot vacuum cleaner) being turned against you by hacks only possible from cheap ubiquitous internet. Without any questions about if doomscrolling does or doesn't induce psychological problems, if sexual deepfakes are worse than schoolyard rumours, or if AI is sopping kids from learning as cheating is easier.