I'm pretty sure the point of the graphic was literally "look, people said the same thing a generation ago about the generation before!"

In fact, the sentences around the graphic reinforce this reading:

> in the 80s, people were complaining that things had gone to hell. Here’s a popular list (the facts are totally fabricated, by the way) distributed at the time

> None of this means that the worriers are mistaken or that we are in the grip of a moral panic (though I might make this argument in another post). But it does suggest that the popularity of despair can’t be taken as good evidence that this despair is warranted.