There have been changes in the manufacturing process to "pre-shrink" fabrics.

Similar improvements have been made to improve colorfastness. Mixing new reds and whites used to consistently produce pink. Not anymore.

I wish I lived in your world. It is very rare I find a long-sleeved garment whose sleeves are long enough, and it usually only takes a wash or two for them to become too short :(

I've had the opposite problem where I hadn't had shrinking issues in years until I got a new LG dryer with one of those auto sensing modes that it defaults to. The "smart" feature is terrible. I had a number of shirts shrink on me because it sometimes goes absurdly overboard with the drying.

Once we figured out the problem and stopped using all of the smart features it started working fine. Unfortunately the interface really wants you to use the fancy modes and requires an annoying amount of steps to manually set a drying run. Easily the worst dryer UX I've ever had. I doubt I'll buy another LG appliance, although there are probably plenty of other offenders these days.

I had the same experience until this year, when a shirt I got in the airport on the way home from Philly suddenly became a present for my girlfriend.

Modern heat pump dryers also work at a lower temperature because they cool the air to evaporate the moisture so they don't need to be as hot to start with.

Stretch jeans shrink, even in a heat pump dryer set to a gentle program. Yes, they really do :(

I can only wear tall-size clothing, and generally I've found that none of my t-shirts shrink "in", but they _all_ shrink "up". I can make them last longer washing them delicate and "air-drying" (in the dryer, light or no heat), but eventually they all get shorter. I have to replace most of my undershirts annually, and I rarely bother with t-shirts anymore.

I still find it to be the case that most 100% cotton shirts shrink over time (even pre-shrunk) and have switched to blends just to get some more longevity out of them.

I have a moisture-sensing dryer from the 80's that lets me select between multiple dryness levels, and it is extremely repeatable, as opposed to my parent's modern moisture-sensing dryer that that adds a fixed amount of drying time after the sensor trips, in hopes that the clothes will be dry enough. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't.

I think a lot of things use pre-shrunk fabric these days. I've got t-shirts that haven't shrunk, and t-shirts that have. Unfortunately a lot of band shirts bought at concerts fall into the latter :(.

It's not just moisture sensing. Modern dryers also use patterns to prevent shrinking in terms of reducing the heat and then bringing it back as opposed to a constant temperature until dry.

A lot of cotton is pre-shrunk. Simple as that. Synthetics resist shrinking.

The last thing I had shrink on me was a wool sweater, which was over twenty years ago.

I used the hair conditioner trick to stretch it (same as in this article), which sort of worked.

New clothes also tend to include synthetic fibers that seem to not shrink as much. 100% cotton, or especially wool garments will shrink if you’re not careful, but are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

I've had the opposite problem with several of my t-shirts stretching/expanding going from M to something equivalent to XL size and I fail to understand why.

I am not using a dryer, only a washing machine.

Can UV do that?

It's rarely an issue with coton, but it's still a problem with cashmere or wool. Even on the most delicate settings you can have surprises

Most cotton is preshrunk now

I've killed a bunch of stuff lately mixing some wool socks in with towels. Oops. The towels stay wet long enough that the wool got overheated, and then my 8 year old spent the next week yelling at me for ruining his socks. :)

Check your (wet) pockets and waistbands more often.

Those sensors, across brands, are absolute garbage.