I'm skeptical of the income inequality hypothesis as the US Gini has been mostly stagnant for 20 years (as per https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA). I'd imagine that (social|) media has a fairly large impact on this phenomenon as it makes inequality more visible than before.

You're probably right about (social) media being a factor but overindexing on Gini. Here's a chart that shows dramatically rising wealth gaps in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

If I got this right Gini measures inequality in either income or spending but as Piketty showed we have crazy rising inequality in capital / wealth.