The 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, all feel like discrete periods

Whoa, what extreme thinking that is. A nuclear war wouldn't shake up anything. It would be the end of all. Maybe you don't have any kids, but those that do, don't really want to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear war. Can you imagine trying to take care of a six month old baby, smack dab in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? Not fun.

I think kids probably got taken at a similar rate but there was no media to sensationalize or report on it

You also didn't have to worry about some busybody neighbor reporting you to CPS for letting your kids play outside. It's infuriating how CPS seems to turn a blind eye to real cases involving abuse yet go out of their way to harass innocent parents for trivial things.

I grew up in the 90's, just when organized crime and all that was beginning to take hold where I live. Not to mention in a pretty bad neighbourhood (by local standards), and we played outside all day long. But people relyed on each other more I guess. Most our parents worked, but there were neighbours and grandparents keeping an eye out for us kids. Reprimanding us if we were misbehaving. And we listened (as much as kids do). And also, parents were cool with that. Now, people don't do that anymore.

The actual statistics of child abduction by strangers has not changed, or if anything, has gone down.
It's only the PERCEPTION of safety which has changed.

I think the post 2000 era will be defined more by iphone iterations than decades

rock stars were once such mythical creatures
up there with presidents playmates and preachers

I agree on the music. Music has evolved much like technology, where there were very distinct eras as instruments, mediums and studios advanced. At some point, they reached a plateau or equilibrium.

The advancements in computers saw each generation of processors and peripherals render the previous obsolete. Now, you can still use a decade old computer to surf the web, send emails, watch movies, listen to music, etc... I can look back at the early advancements and be like "Hey you remember having Soundblaster sound cards? You remember when you needed a separate MPEG2 decoder card for DVDs?"

Music is the same way. It used to be you needed a big band. Then the Beatles came along with their "guitar music."

Then you had electric guitars. Then the synthesizer sound of the early 80s. That sound was only because the technology of the synthesizer was not advanced enough to mimic real world instruments, so it generated that artificial tone sound.

At some point in the late 90s much of the music all started to sound the same. There was no distinct line between genres after a certain time. The subcultures that went along with the genres also seemed to disappear.

Finally, there was a limit on consumption from live music only, to live and real-time radio only. Then to vinyl and 8 track and cassette and CD.

So things of the past stayed in the past. Even when you could play music "on demand" with albums, you still had to dig out the record/tape/CD and put it in, limiting access to the past.

This generated an additional sense of nostalgia and distinct eras that could fit nicely in compartmentalized memories.

I've tried to explain this to my kids, who have had the entire catalog of their lives' music available at their fingertips all the time. For them, there is no finding that mixtape in a box while cleaning out the back of their closet and putting it on and instantly transporting to the era of denim jackets and t-top trans-ams.

They hear a song from when they were 5 and it's the same song that's been on their playlist from the time of their first iPod.

I think one big reason for the distinctiveness of the decades in the second half of the twentieth century was the post-WWII baby boom, by far the largest generation in US history, combined with the US's huge influence on popular culture worldwide in the same time period, and also perhaps including the near-eradication of the middle class.

A whole lotta people were children in the 50s and we had The Mickey Mouse Club and The Howdy Doody Show on TV. The same people hit puberty in the 60s and we had boys wearing long hair, the British (rock) Invasion, crowded college campuses, protests against being drafted into the military and getting sent off to die, and a breakdown in respect for authority. In the 70s the boomers were young singles looking for jobs, sex and gas for their cars. In the 80s they were boogeying in discos, part of Corporate America, raising a family, or some combination thereof. Oh, and they were jogging. In the 90s, the boomers were settling into middle age, but exploring the wonders of technology. Things quieted down, and social isolation started spreading.

Why did I mention the vanishing middle class? Social developments are largely determined by economic forces. I think the reason we are discussing these particular decades is because they have so many different and distinctive cultural attributes. They were a time when a lot of people were earning good money and having an influence in the cultural marketplace. That time is passed and our culture has paled, I feel.

By the way, discrete and distinct do mean the same thing. 😉 To be fair, I had to look it up.🤔

All good music and movies are already been made. Art is not infinite. Sculptures and statues were peaked long long time ago. All the good ideas all already been done. Today, if you're making a statue you can only make a worse or, at best, as good as the old statues. But you can always make it bigger, stronger, higher, etc.

Movies today are the same old stories told with bigger budget, cleaner sound, stronger effects, clearer picture, crazier marketing, etc. It's virtually impossible to create new kind of movie anymore.

Yet it didn't stop us enjoying new sculptures and new statues, right? I for one don't stop enjoying new movies either.