When I was a kid most of the stuff one would buy was crap, if it did work it didn't do much and more often than not it either didn't work or didn't work for long.
If I were to bike any great distance there was a good chance that I would need to at least fiddle my bike a bit or maybe even fix it. Definitely I had to regularly adjust and fix my bike. But my nieces and nephews bikes just go on and on working just fine. So in that extremely infrequent occasion when it needs some work they just have the bike shop do it (which would have cost too much in my childhood).
My first computer which was a VIC-20 didn't even come with storage when I got it. Thus any program I wanted I typed in, played with, and when the computer was turned off it vanished. Eventually I got a tape drive and was a marvel. The floppy drive for my C64 was completely over the top.
Then with the first PC we all had to fiddle with the config.sys to squeeze that extra few K that was needed for some program or a sound driver needed for another.
So all these experiences have turned me into somewhat of a technological hill-billy. I am perfectly happy to resolder a failed headphone jack in my laptop or replace a capacitor in a failed monitor. I will make the programs I want using languages ranging from Python to C++ and have zero problems creating fantastically strong replacement parts with just invented composites based on such products as JB Weld. My electric razor had a great cutting mechanism but the battery just wasn't good enough. So rebuilt it using a pair of 18650s and a heat sync to help defend the now slightly overworked DC motor. It isn't a proper Christmas nativity if the star isn't a green laser pointer controlled by an arduino and some 9g servos.
So in my world fixing things, improving things, salvaging things, and making things better are all an overlapping concept. I rented a car this weekend and it was a pile of crap GMC with OnStar. It was all I could do to stop myself from going under the hood to rip the onstar clean out of whatever sewage pit they kept it in and just reinstall it moments before returning the car.
Most of the people around me though stare at me funny when I rip apart an old all-in-one printer in 5 minutes so that I can extract those excellent 10mm rods. Or when I can take a faulty iPhone apart in a restaurant after the person complains of only ever getting 1 signal dot anymore and just wiggling the antenna wire returning them to 5 dot nirvana. As I am simply not taken aback by faulty gadgets or machines, yet I see many people use a cracked screen as an excuse for a phone upgrade.
But this is not just a younger generation thing. I think in the generation before me it was just as bad. They simply didn't have the tools to fix things like their reel to reel tape machines and things broke so fast that it pretty much wasn't worth the effort to fix them. A typical 1970s car that came with any features usually lost those features one by one very quickly. I can remember many cars from my early childhood where the power windows were dead, heater was dead, brakes made funny noises, the car backfired, the car wouldn't shut down when the key was turned off, etc. And these were cars that were only a few years old. But the problem wasn't something that a little fiddle could fix. These were fundamental problems such as all the wiring being wildly susceptible to corrosion; resulting in the car being beyond any reasonable repair. This too resulted in a generation of people who were largely incapable of fixing things.
But lastly it is almost certainly economics. In the 70s things were changing so quickly that in many cases it was better not to fix it but to buy the new and improved version. Now it might not be worth the time and money to fix things. I have collected a bunch of nice tools and skills for fixing things. I have various glues and epoxies. I have nearly every conceivable small screwdriver. I have soldering stations. But I also have so many years of experience that I can take apart that thing that is very hard to take apart. I have the replacement part. And I have the skill to put the new and potentially better part in place. So I might take out the LM7805 and replace it with a LM2940 and a 22 uf capacitor so that the now smaller batteries will last longer. So for someone who was a young adult in the 70s it might have been more efficient to not repair things, and a young adult in 2015 might find that things are so cheap that again it isn't worth their time/money to fix things. But for someone who was a young adult in the 40s might have found things were so valuable that fixing was well worth their efforts, and someone of the 80s might be so good at it now that it is worth their efforts.