Do people have an overabundance of options or do they just not know how to choose? I've met a lot of people who are emotionally anemic - I've suffered emotional anemia - and the denial of fundamental unhappiness leads to greater lifetime unhappiness more than whatever is the mad dash and struggle it takes to find happiness.

I think about how people are sometimes encouraged to not trust themselves and I wonder if that is a greater force attributing to the degradation of culture rather than an overabundance of options. Even out of the top songs today, what percentage of them encourage the (presumably teenaged listener) to stop listening to other people and start listening to themselves?

Say there were only ten musicians to listen to, and only in their music only were you inspired in how to live. Seems like you'd have less options about who to actually grow up to be than if you had, say, 100.

I think advertising and the machine of consumer culture has something to do with this, though I hesitate to make a formal argument as I haven't done all the research and I'd rather not paint myself as anti-capitalist. But if culture is made by the choices taken by individuals based on what is in front of them, the incentives of who makes those choices attractive to the average person need to be checked. Largely I think what makes a choice attractive for less experienced people ("the youth") comes down to marketing/emotional appeal. Generally, what incentivizes a person in charge of making any of these choices more appealing than the other?

And to a point of the options kids are presented with being "bad" - banning books (or music, or video games) does not stop people from reading (listening/playing) them. You need to write better books.