Yes and no.
Some things were better, others were worse. And yes, we have selective memory, and that’s a good thing. We certainly do remember the past with rose-colored glasses.
Do you remember when your adult teeth came in, and they had those horrible points and ridges on them, making your mouth terribly uncomfortable until you’d ground them down? I bet not. But I bet you remember how fun it was to chase the ice cream truck or get pulled in a sled by your father (or fill in your own rosy-colored childhood memory).
Bullying in schools was definitely a problem, but never in my wildest dreams did I worry about being shot at school.
The woods where we played as kids how has fences and borders and keep out signs. On the other hand, there’s highway to get there, so you don’t have to drive for endless hours. The beach was great with so few people, but now it’s nice to have neighbors. Things change.
As a kid in the 60’s & 70’s, I saw lots of nostalgia for the WWII era. But it was obvious that nobody wanted to go back to that! Regardless, my parents’ generation remembered and treasured the feeling of everyone being in it together, sharing the awful responsibility of being at war. Even the worst things can cause the best memories, and even those best memories have flaws (that “sharing” was done separately by “colored people”.)
On a similar vein, it’s all too easy to look at one aspect of society and overgeneralize a trend. A decade ago, I was with friends who were grad students, 10 or so years younger than I was. They observed that the country was getting more conservative, alarmingly so.
I chuckled at that. Certainly it was true that the government in power at the time was strongly right-wing, and had set the clock back on a number of fronts that were offensive to their liberal views. (And to my conservative ones, but that’s another story.) I understood why they saw things that way, but listed a number of areas where things continued to progress (sexism and racism, for example). It’s a challenge to see the big picture.
Bottom line: there were benefits and cool things, but I’ll take now over then, in a heartbeat.