My view is that the answer to "why are people often unhappy in modernity" is actually pretty clear and isn't anything especially ideologically satisfying. It isn't economic precarity, we're very rich. It isn't lack of social community, we actually choose that. It isnt a lack of spirituality or an abundance of plastics or this or that. It's just information abundance. Imagine the ancestral village. How often do you get new information about the world? What works, what threats there are, what food is abundant, what others think of you... you do get that from time to time, more if you're out ranging for food. And what it all has in common is its all life or death. Starvation is a risk if you mismanage food or predators, injury risks infection and death. The opinion of the humans around you is especially dangerous - who gets fed in lean times? And of course tall poppy syndrome predominates hunter gatherers so if you're too useful you may meet an unfortunate riverbed fall too. Your mind evolved in an environment where most new information was life and death especially the opinions of others. You live in an environment where you are constantly awash in new information and the opinions of others. How would a mind grown in the former respond to the latter? It would be constantly on edge, frantically searching to see the hidden meaning behind every social cue, the threat in every circumstance, the risks to every good thing. There would be so many things to worry about it could never hit them all. And so it would respond like a mind in the village having an endless web of panics would respond - it would assume on some subconscious level that the environment was dangerous and pull away. Pull away from social situations it cant manage, pull away from resource sources it can't maintain. Retreat, retrench, recoil. Anyone who's ever struggled with anxiety can imagine easily. And indeed what do we see, as technology becomes more prevalent, the information diet gets more constant? More people retreat, retrench, recoil from everything. Even video games obviously fit this - village brain wants to find a different environment that's going better than it thinks yours is. And it gets it. Challenging but bounded, very satisfying to thrive in. And of course people are different, the rising tide hits different people sooner. The young more not just because they're more digital and less fully formed mentally but because they have less context, less anchored sense of what really matters. But some are more stress tolerant than others, have better ability to identify what matters and phase out other signals than others. But neurotic agreeable people (nervous people who really care about what others think) are in trouble. And that's it basically. The other stuff is more satisfying and a better story but frankly i think it's just that simple.