But, that aside, it's an odd thing to try to contextualize. Do I THINK that there were more kids that were "troubled"? No, anecdotally, I don't think I saw anything that I would consider alarming. But I never really saw any kid as "troubled". Just "focusing on the wrong thing" or "thinking about it in a confusing way", or "trying to reconcile two incompatible ideas/philosophies", etc.

Meanwhile, my peers would complain about things being "worse" or specific kids being "unable to work with" or whatever. But when the kids were shuffled and it was my time to work with them, I didn't really have any issues. There were kids trying to tear down the walls, sure, but that's a lot of fun if you chase it. And, more importantly, it's physically exhausting. So sooner than later, all of the kids just want to chill. And once they're chill, they like to discuss all kinds of things. Especially if they can be related to the physical activities they were just doing. And since kids are generally ignorant, you can take all kinds of winding paths of rhetoric to link one idea to another, and they tend to stay excited to chase the logic (learning is fun; it's part of why we play video games).

So, answering your question is kind of odd because while I would say "no", that may not be your standard of measurement and I'm just one anecdote anyway. If the statistics say it's getting "worse", I can trust that, personally. Just - like you said - I tend to think of the "worse" as describing the cause, not the symptom.