Okay... I'm tempted to answer this by: The big problem is that nowadays young peoples don't think by themselves, just following a crowd attracted by a mirage. And, probably more important, are living in delusion about what reality should be and what reality was.
I mean, I laughed when reading your last sentence. Seriously, what do you think society was in the past ?
Have you read
Germinal, by Zola ? The story of late 19th century french miners fighting for their rights. While being a fiction, everything it talk about is true, and it don't just apply to french miners, it apply to the working class all around the world. And there's others books like that, depicting the reality of the working class in the late 19th century, early 20th century.
Of course, nowadays society isn't perfect, but unlike in the early 1900's, in most part of the world you don't anymore have to works 12 or more hours a day, 7 days a week, 6 if your country was highly religious and you got lucky enough to have the full day off. All this with not even a single holiday day. You don't anymore life in a house/flat that is owned by your employer, and deducted from your salary. You don't anymore shop in stores own by your employer, not having to pay, but having everything you buy directly deducted from your salary. A salary that, at constant life cost was around 5 time less than nowadays average salary.
More important, you can now goes to university. You don't anymore have the, near to mandatory, obligation to follow your father's step. This simply because the schools too, if you had the luxury to live in a country where there's public schools, were generally owned by your employer, and their goals wasn't to educate you, but to prepare you to works for him. Speaking of school, in most part of the world child labor isn't legal anymore, and also not really needed. So you can be educated, and you can be it without feeling guilty because you're not working to help your parents pay for tonight meal.
Life is not perfect, far from it, but get rid of the illusion that it was better in the past.
In 1900, in the US an average worker was working 2,938 hours by year. In 1950, it dropped to 1,989 hours, and in 2017 it's was 1,757 hours. In 1900 an US worker had 5 vacation days, 17 in 1940, and 20 in 2000 ; and the US aren't really a good example, but it's, alas, seen as reference by so many people...[
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I'm 53yo, and it wasn't better when I was in school, than it is nowadays. Globally speaking it was more the opposite. One of the main change is that there isn't anymore things like the "20/30/40 years working there" medals. Joining a company, you were expected to dedicate it all your life, and all your time; something that stopped to be a thing for the generation right before mine. Being 30yo and wanting to join a company was suspicious, even if you leaved on your own. If you were a good worker your previous employer wouldn't have let you go, so you surely worth nothing. And if you had the chance to be hired, it would have been to be treated like the not reliable person you were to their eyes.
There's a meaning in life, but it depend on everyone and, more important, it's you that have to find it. It will not come to you just because you followed a full scholar curriculum and now have a highly valuable diploma. By doing so with the hope to find the meaning of life during the process, you just end with a piece of paper and no answer.
And it's there, and nowhere else, that society have now evolved in the worse say. They value diplomas, and more importantly high ones, way too much, giving youth the false idea that it's what solve everything in life. And countries don't even to this for their youth, they do it to looks good on the charts ; hey, looks, my citizens are better than yours, and my universities are higher ranked...
I have a cousin that is stone mason. He do the same number of hours than me, while earning almost twice more. All this with a (seen as) "no value diploma", while I'm now team manager, second to the boss. And both of us are happy, because we found the meaning of life by doing what we wanted to do and liking doing it.
And the key is here. I followed a classical curriculum because it's what I wanted, while he didn't because it's what he wanted. This while nowadays most peoples follow a classical curriculum just because they are told that they must do it.
I'm grumpy as fuck and can be a real bitch when I want, but I'm not nasty, and never aggressive for no reason. And I'm not the only one, most peoples, even on Internet, are nice peoples who stay nice as long as you don't starts to shit on their shoes.
Internet just expose more the trashy minority, but it neither created it, nor increased it. This even if those peoples gained confidence through their use of internet, and are now more openly trashy also in real life.
But if you base your view regarding the society on them, once again it's a you issue, not a reality.
I live in France, and according to French peoples on Internet, the Olympic games were going to be them striking every second, trashing every single event, and so on. Oh, it was a real concern, because they were so loud, making it looks like the whole country was talking.
Well, the reality is that they tried, being 5 here, 10 there, looking like idiots so isolated that you can't even qualify them as being a minority. Internet is a distorting mirror, it don't, and will never, represent the reality. Angry peoples on Internet are not different from drunkard in a bar. They found an audience and use it to feel important, that's all. And in both case, it's nothing more than one loud person facing tens (thousands for internet) of silent ones.
And again, it was worse in the past, even in a not so long past.
Having a freezer was a luxury in the 70's. Having a computer was a luxury in the 90's. Nowadays, a 20yo will claim to be poor if he don't have both, plus a microwave, a big flat TV screen, a TV cable operator, a good quality ISP, and a less than 3yo smartphone. Oh, and I forgot, they are even poorer if they can't afford to have their dinner delivered at their home at anytime they want.
Oh, obviously, this doesn't mean that there isn't poverty. There's poverty, and in some countries it's worse than in others. But you don't hear about those poor peoples, because they don't have times to spend on Internet, assuming that they have the computer or smartphone needed to goes on Internet.
If you complain about your own poverty on internet, at one time you had enough to buy a computer or a smartphone, and now you've still enough to pay for your ISP or phone operator. Two things that are a luxury for anyone who's actually poor.
There's nothing preventing you to do it, and you can perfectly live that way. But I guess that the suspension point hide a "doing it while keeping the level of luxury and comfort I actually have thanks to my computer, smartphone and many service subscriptions".
Strictly speaking, it's also easy to do, most of the country live inland.
But it goes for China like it goes for the rest of the world. The instant youth learn about the life outside of the village, they want to leave to live it. They are the migrants no one talk about, lured by the idea that life will be better in the town, totally clueless about the reality of that life.
Now, to come back to China, it's a really strange move coming from the Party. Having a big population of unemployed disillusioned bored highly educated young peoples isn't the best way to keep a country under a strict control. It's not a instant strike out, but it will stack up, years after years, until it reach a critical mass.
