I dunno, I hear stories from my coworkers about how bad East Germany and other former Soviet states were in the 80s/90s. It depends a lot on where you were fortunate enough to grow up.

Also ignorance is bliss and as kids we didn't give a shit about politics. But in this instance things were 100% better no doubt.

Idk, I wanted to kill myself as a kid and don't now. So personally, the world seems pretty okay to me.

I dunno man, there was an atomic cloud over Europe from a reactor meltdown which meant we couldn't go outside when I was a kid.