> It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation.

So this means that we have decided a priori that life can only improve in all aspects? That’s evidently absurd.

This is called a thought-terminating cliché. It’s as intellectually nuanced as putting your fingers in your ears and singing “la la I’m right”. It’s often used not because it is true, but because to prove otherwise is very hard and inherently subjective.

It's not really a thought-terminating cliche.

Concrete issues (e.g. iPads in the classroom result in worse tested recall) retain plenty of space.

It's the vague repetitive "man yells at cloud" gripes that get auto-terminated, e.g. "is our children learning?"