Big difference then was we knew what an advertisement looked or sounded like. It was very clear and was heavily regulated. It's not so clear now, it's all blurred together. Non-disclosed sponsored content left right and center. Micro-transactions draining bank accounts. Training kids to gamble through the guise of loot boxes. It's pretty fucked up for young people now. We forget that they don't know what it was like before the internet, before mobile phones, before social media, before media streaming. All they know is this world. This is their only frame of reference.
Fortunately my niece is quite switched on and regularly asks us about our experiences when we were her age. Like how we would discover music back then. Like you said, it was mostly radio, friends and family. One thing that fascinated me was that she is 19 and had never heard of nor watched Rage. Fortunately you can stream it on iView now, so we put on the Friday night stream and immediately she found a few artists she had never heard of and wanted to check out. We explained that it was super common for us as young people to just hang out at a mates house having drinks, talking shit with Rage on in the background. It's obviously still curated content but it's not individually targeted content so you are always going to get exposed to a mixed bag of stuff. I think that's the biggest flaw in this new world. Nobody is stumbling onto anything by accident. Nobody is hearing a song that isn't "because I listened to this other song". Nobody is borrowing/burning a CD from a mates collection because nobody has a collection anymore. Nobody is reading a random article they found flipping through a newspaper or magazine. Nobody is tagging along to a football game because nobody is hanging out together anymore.
On the positive, today's young people are definitely better at some things. They have a much better understanding of mental health, which is actually huge. They might not have the solutions, but they are way more aware of those issues. Whereas when we would be feeling shitty, we'd drink our problems away at some trashy nightclub. Then repeat the following week.
Also, dudes don't have to call the home phone when they were trying to hook up with a girl anymore. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. My palms are sweating right now just remembering those times I'd gather the courage to call some chick, only for her old man to answer the phone and then having to make some sort of small talk with him. I don't know what was worse, when her dad would answer or when a younger sister would answer. Either way it sucked.