What was it that changed society so drastically?

All of the above, the first half of the 20th century was filled with 2 world wars, a great depression and huge jumps in technology and a baby boom. Our parents, I am an early boomer and an old hippie, wanted us to have a better world to look forward to and to grow up in and the expansion of western economies provided much incentive to make us believe it would work. All of this happened too fast for human evolution to make the adjustment so now us oldsters are disillusioned that our dreams have been destroyed, our children were over protected and over privileged and don't know how to fend for themselves, in a sense all of us were nouveaux riche in the 70s and 80s and those generations are like many second generation rich kids, we society, parents, government) told them they would have more just because they were here. I also think that the first ten years of the boomer generation is very different from the second half and those 40 and 50 year olds are running the world right now.