Cultural fashions come and go, of course, and what is passe now may revive later. Permanent cultural changes (the spread of a new religion) or technological changes might have clearer consequences.
I wonder how much "use it or lose it" plays a role in shaping the way we think and solve problems. I've done some DAQ work, in which I had to care about what bits were on which traces in the interface card, and had to track down odd program problems with strace. I've also had to use icon-based administration. You think about problems in different ways, approach problems differently. Allegedly the latter approach lets you think "big picture," but corner cases pop up, and you wind up having to know some details anyway. I think about problems a little differently from most of the rest of my family; I suspect because I trained as a scientist.
We have our "go to" toolkit for meeting new problems. Sometimes this is disastrous--think of the folks who use the "nice doggy, here, have a treat" approach to Yellowstone bison. That toolkit is part of our culture. Our urban/suburban toolkit doesn't include anything dealing with edible animals. If it did, I suspect we'd have fewer vegan restaurants. It does include tools for giving the appearance of independence (your own apartment, etc), and the more popular philosophies magnify the importance of independence. I don't see the latter changing without a change in the toolkit, whether that is economic/technological (e.g. apartments get too dear) or religious (e.g. like the Beguines).
FWIW, we use Slack at work. One of the channels is titled "First World Problems." Those are the kind of things that the young and lucky(*) get worked up over. Do we have more of them than earlier generations? That'll certainly make a generational change.
(*) Luck includes wealth.
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