What did change was income growth. Income fell relative to consumption. Trends in people's habits did not change, but their way of financing these habits did. The other question is about me the consumer, as opposed to economist. I would like to be able to achieve greater self-discipline in my own consumption, but this has nothing to do with any social good but purely what would be good for my family.
Consumer products facilitate the use of leisure time, as well as exhaust such time.
Fewer products might result in more time, but not necessarily time better spent. Of course, we would like consumption to reflect humane values, and in a market-based system the necessity of profits endangers such values. Note that this is a concern along numerous points of the political spectrum, including the right. Markets are amoral. They sell what people want, think they want, or are convinced they want, and often we decry the social and personal consequences of this process.