Honest question, has there ever been a generation that experienced youth the same as the generation before them?

Hundrends.

For one, "youth" (and being a "teenager") is a rather recent innovation. Children around 13-14 years old were already consider kind of "young adults" for centuries, had to work and help with the family business, lots of them got married, etc.

Second, especially in rural areas, nothing much changed for centuries, say between 16th century and 17th century or 18th century in how people lived. Clothing, equipment, food, even music and dance were mostly the same throghout. And their general outlook on life was even more constant.

In some more populated/urban places, like Paris or London, there were small differences and some fashion, but even those changed very slowly compared to the era of widespread tv and radio, and they mostly concerned the upper classes.

I'm sure it was fairly constant pre-industrial revolution, but maybe change is just accelerating over time.

That doesn't change youths very much.

>The levels of rain fluctuated. The levels other important resources fluctuated, namely those like animals, trees, and other raw materials that pre-industrial societies relied on.

For one, these doesn't affect outlook on life and youth as an experience much. Except if they involve huge hardships etc.

Second, all those were more or less constant (sure, "levels of rain fluctuated", but they fluctuated thoughtout the life of each generation, and throughout generations). Villages lived the same way of life, with the same rivers and the same kind of weather climate for centuries on end. Heck, in lots of places in rural Europe (Greece, Spain, France, Italy, etc) they still do (distractions of modern mass media and available consumer goods aside).

Rivers don't change courses that often, except perhaps in a delta area.

And there were lots of wars.

It is for many.

More employers are parsimonious with vacation time, so no summer trips. Moms work now. Thus many kids go to daycare, but we call it camp.

I envy my friends who are teachers married to teachers. I would love to spend my summers with my wife and son!

My Dad, who is still alive, kept a diary of growing up during the Dust Bowl in US midwest. Unfortunately, that diary is lost. But those days of dust and drought, growing up on a farm during the Great Depression, and later going to war in the South Pacific and coming back and then working as a civil rights worker left an indelible mark on him.

He really enjoyed a book I gave him recently, Bill Bryson's "One Summer -- America, 1927". He says that it brings back many memories.

I went to day camp in the 1960s.