It used to be you could find a box of photos or keepsakes that you inherited to look back on how things were or when you were a kid. Now, most of that is stored on phones, and most parents probably don’t think to share or save them in a way to be passed down in the future.
And yet, since the total number of pictures taken has become a lot higher in the digital (and especially smartphone) era, we will have way more surviving photographic documentation of everything that’s happened since then.
If people in 1986 took (say) 10 analog photos per month on average and 9 of them survive, that’s a lot less than if people in 2026 took 100 analog photos per month and 30 of them survive.