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> On top of anecdotes (in my grandfather's generation, the norm was to fluently speak 3-4 languages)

I'm not aware of anyone in my grandfather's generation that can speak more than one language fluently. The fact that my grandparents grew up on farms on the edge of the Dust Bowl may have something to do with that, but I rather suspect you're attempting to compare a tiny subset of the population in the past against the majority of the public today.

I agree and that’s why it was framed as an anecdote.

I'm a math professor at a US state university. I once asked one of my older colleagues whether our students had gotten better or worse over the years.

About the same, he said.

I think that professors judge their own generation by their peer group, and the current generation by their classes.

That's almost certainly "rosy past" bias. Even Aristoteles is said to have complained about the terrible youth.