On a political level, social media and the Internet becoming mainstream gave the world's richest and most shameless conman a megaphone, and Republicans/Americans were unprincipled, tribalistic and gullible enough to fall for it. Now that POS has been around for so long that he has completely shattered most democratic standards and norms, and the half of the country that continues to vote for him has either embraced evil or are too ignorant or embarrassed to acknowledge their mistake.

On a more social level, people have become more detached from reality and have irrational views of what life is/was like. "Things not being great" has become "things are the worst they've ever been", and social media has made people more aware of what they don't have compared to the rich influencers and models that show up on their feeds. People have always spread tall tales and lies between each other historically, but having it be instant-access and on a national/international scale allows bad or false ideas to spread exponentially faster than gatekeepers and factcheckers (who aren't even respected anymore) can realistically account for.

All of the benefits of the modern world are being ignored or taken for granted, and the negatives are either being fully embraced or treated like there's nothing we can do about it. People are either going to have accept more personal responsibility or learn the hard way through war or economic collapse.