To add to the anecdotal evidence.
I'm in year 17 of teaching middle school. It is almost impossible to explain all the various ways things have changed since the start of my career.
When I began, nobody had smart phones, there was no social media, etc. There were mean kids back then of course, but nowhere near like today. I'd echo the sentiment shared earlier by the healthcare worker and the story about the bar owner earlier in the thread. The <5% mean has skyrocketed.
Parents are openly hostile towards the teachers and staff. Parents and some students are more openly racist than ever. Kids don't want to learn something in school if they can't directly see how it will make them money. When my career started, teachers would get stupid amounts of chocolate and crap at Christmas or whatever, now out of 150 students I might see 5 or 6 cards.
It isn't just one source of this stuff either. It's a combination of radicalization through social media, kids with unrestricted and unmonitored internet access, kids seeing their parents get radicalized politically. Another big part is that many families feel they should be better off than they actually are. It's a good school district in what was historically a fairly wealthy suburb, but demographics and a shrinking middle class have a lot of people questioning if all the sacrifices they made to be here were worth it.
I don't know answers to any of it. I know schools are attempting to teach kids how to be nice to each other, but it is such an uphill battle. They all talk in real life like they're on reddit, and they would much rather own someone and shit post than actually make a friend.