My take on this: life is actually a lot harder for young people than when we were kids. There is less opportunity for upwardly mobile advancement, and social media has essentially wrecked people's brains (adults included). I complained that I think it's sad that a lot of young people don't just see "going over to friends' houses to hang out" as a primary option - it just doesn't occur to a lot of young people, but in many respects a lot of them never learned this skill as kids. Tons of studies have shown kids have a lot less "unstructured play" time than they used to.

But then given that stuff is actually harder, I think blaming "stuff is just too expensive" is simply easier. Otherwise it forces you to confront the fact that a lot of this stuff is in your control.