Well it's a bit like the Freedom From/Freedom To argument.
Yes there are things about modern life (antibiotics anyone?) that make living now preferable. But there are also things - increasing family breakdown, increasing lack of social contact, breakdown in community, globalisation, the threat of nuclear weapons, increased inflation to wages, increased bureaucracy, lack of spiritual leadership, increased expectations that make living life daily stressful.
I've read stories of people living a hundred years or so years ago in certain parts of America and UK say no income tax, very little material possessions but house no matter how humble belonged to them, land rights easier to obtain, didn't need a degree to get a job to live. Living expenses to inflation lower. Toilet might have outside the house, there may have been no running water but there's community, children relatively free to roam.
I grew up in the 70s in a house without central heating, yet I don't believe my children have had a better childhood than I did. I think mine was better (objectively speaking and taking out the abusive family crap)
It's a good rubric to use. I personally do not think Millennials or Gen Z have had and are necessarily having a better life than the 2 or 3 generations before them.
So ultimately life got better to a point. But now it's questionable if that upward trajectory is continuing along the things that give people a real sense of meaning.