When they talk about safety, they're referring to mental health, not computer security.
Social media has destroyed mental health and keeps getting worse. Children are easily impressionable, but it's also affecting adults who should know better. I don't know of any way to fix it besides tearing it all down and starting over. Social media (and reality TV - that isn't Internet-related, but it had a similar effect by brainwashing the masses into dividing themselves) should never have existed. Also, it's funny that you mention 2020 because that was the year that every social media platform stared their big censorship narrative while promoting hate instead.
In terms of computer security, I'd say things are worse now because web standards have allowed malicious websites to be even more invasive. For example, websites are allowed to actively block you from closing the browser window or tab, and a website can push notifications to the OS after navigating away or even after closing the browser entirely. To make matters worse, all of those malicious hijacks come from ads, and all major browser and phone OS developers are trying to destroy ad blockers (yes, even Firefox). I guess I'm going to need to go back to a custom hosts file like 2009 (when the major ad blockers simply hid the visible portion of ads and still allowed malicious scripts to run in the background).
