It's a combination of a lot of things, one of them probably being growing up. I'd list that as the smallest reason, though, because if that were 150% true, then you'd be looking back at cartoons that you watched as a kid and you wouldn't enjoy them. Meanwhile, I'm watching an Ed, Edd n' Eddy live-stream on YouTube and this stuff is loving great. These are episodes I didn't even watch as a kid and it's still good. "Growing up" is not a big factor at all.
What has to be the largest factor is the generational shift. When we were growing up, people like Butch Hartman and Craig McCracken were drawing the shows we were watching, people who grew up in the 70's and 80's, when people were doing crack and loving everyone. If you watch some episodes of the cartoons their generation made, they're not afraid to touch on mature subjects for children's cartoons. There had just been a wave of political correctness in the 90's, so of course they'd go with the more daring choices. Remember the episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog where it was implied there was domestic violence between a cat girl and her dog boyfriend? In fact, Courage the Cowardly Dog is probably the perfect example of the mindset of creators at the time, which was that they were less concerned about "think of the children!!" and more concerned with making something that would last. Concepts such as
blood-bending and
King Ramses' curse would not exist in modern cartoons. What there was was a plethora of good cartoons, a lot of average ones, and once in a blue moon something that should not have been aired on television. Their biggest mistake was deviating from cartoons into a bunch of live-action stuff that shouldn't've be aired on networks dedicated to cartoons.
A couple decades have passed, and who's making the cartoons now? Millennials are. Millennials are probably the most attacked generation since the baby boomers, and most of the criticism is how they're spineless, or how political correctness is a big thing for them, or how they have no artistic standards, or whatever. To me, some of the criticisms are valid and some are overblown, although the one criticism I agree with the most is of their artistry. You can trace almost all the show creators on Cartoon Network to either CalArts or NYU, and while it wasn't an issue with the McCracken generation (who also came from CalArts with a group of creators), you could definitely say it's a problem with this generation. Even taking a cursory glance at the cartoons on the network, there's no denying that the art style of pretty much every single on of them is identical.
I bring this up again:
The reason this is the case is because CalArts has been teaching their students that this is the easiest way to show character emotion, so that's the style everyone chooses. I'm not lying, either. This face shape is in practically everything. What it's not in nearly as much are older cartoons.
This is my point about this; when I say they have problems with their artistry I'm not saying that their art isn't good. I'm saying it's lazy. Ian Jones-Quartey, who works on pretty much everything at Cartoon Network nowadays, once said, "If you can tell it's the same character, it's on-model." That seems to be the driving philosophy behind a lot of the work they've made because in shows like Steven Universe and OK KO, the art style will sometimes change dramatically in between episodes. This has ended up in what appears to be a chronic illness in Steven Universe's Beach City where it appears everyone is loving shrinking for no reason.
There isn't a lot of experimentation with animation anymore either; if you've seen one way of doing it, chances are you've seen them all. And a lot of them are very stiff and uninteresting. All of this combined has resulted in a lot of mediocre shows and a lot more bad ones.
There are other things I should talk about, but it's 3:30 im the morning. I need to go to bed. I'll finish this tomorrow.
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