This is an enhanced summary of the article by The School of Life. I think the anonymous author (all SOL articles lack attribution, though they have a highly consistent style) omitted an important consequence of secularisation, namely meaninglessness. I also think they should have added technology and affluence to the characteristics of modernity, as well as the attendant consequence, dissatisfaction. I have taken the liberty of adding these to the summary.
The whole world now lives in what is called the modern age, ie modernity. The chief characteristics of modernity are:
Secularisation
Perhaps the single greatest marker of modernity has been a loss of faith - the loss of a belief in the intervention of divine forces in earthly affairs. Modernity has killed God. Materialism has largely replaced religion.
Progress
Premodern societies envisaged history in cyclical terms; there was no forward dynamic to speak of. Yet to be modern is to believe that we can continually surpass what has come before; national wealth, knowledge, technology, political arrangements and, most broadly, our capacity for happiness seem capable of constant increase. We have severed the chains of repetitive suffering. Time is not a wheel of futility, it is an arrow pointing towards an essentially perfectible destiny.
Affluence
Never before has the average person had such material abundance. Compared to people 200 years ago, we are all wealthy. Nowadays, human aspirations are mainly directed to amassing wealth, a big house, and a comfortable or even luxurious lifestyle. Heaven in the next life no longer beckons; we want satisfaction in this life, and that comes at a monetary price.
Science
We have replaced gods with equations. Science will give us mastery over ourselves, over the mysteries of nature - and ultimately - over death.
Technology
Modern life is suffused with technology. Most of us spend a large proportion of our time, both at work and at leisure, using a device with a screen, such as a mobile, TV or computer.
Speed
Nowhere is further than twenty-six hours away, the contents of a national library can fit onto a circuit the size of a fingernail and the Voyager 1 probe hurtles at seventeen kilometers per second through interstellar space. Knowledge is instantly available.
Individualism
We will fashion our own identities - rather than being defined by families or tradition. We will choose whom to marry, what job to pursue, what gender to be, where to live and how to think.
Romanticism
We are Romantics, that is, we seek a soulmate, an exemplary friend who can at the same time be an exciting sexual partner, a reliable co-parent and a kindly colleague.
Cities
We want to move - along with 85% of the population of modern nations - to the brightly illuminated city, where we can mingle in crowds, try out unfamiliar foods, change jobs, read in parks, rethink our hair and sleep with strangers.
Nature
Premoderns lived in close proximity to nature; they knew how to recognise shepherd's purse and make something edible out of pineapple weed. We instead live in a synthetic environment of concrete, bricks and asphalt, which largely hides nature from view. We have freed ourselves from our previous awe at natural phenomena; we are alive to the sublimity of technology rather than of waterfalls. The emblematic modern locale is the 24-hour supermarket, brightly lit and teeming with the produce of the six continents, proudly defying the barriers of geography and of the night.
Work
We are modern because we work not only to earn money, but to develop our individuality, to exercise our distinctive talents and to find our true selves. We are on a quest for something our ancestors would have thought entirely paradoxical: work that we can love.
Much of the transformation of modernity has been profoundly exciting, thrilling even. Yet the advent of modernity has also been a story of tragedy. We have bought our new freedoms at a very high price indeed. We have perhaps never been quite so close to collective insanity or planetary extinction. Modernity has wreaked havoc on our inner and outer landscapes.
Meaninglessness
Religion used to give us purpose, meaning and a moral framework. The retreat of religion has left a spiritual void.
Failure
Durkheim found that modern societies exacted a far crueller toll on those who judged themselves to have failed. No longer could these unfortunates blame bad luck, or hope for redemption in a next world. To a horrifying degree, it seemed as if there was only one person responsible and only one fitting response. Suicide rates of advanced societies are up to ten times as high as those in traditional ones. Moderns aren't only more in love with success, they are also far more likely to kill themselves when they fail.
Overload
Living in cities, we are shaken by crowds, overstimulated by news, exhausted by choice, cut off from nature and driven to frenetic busyness by expectations and the fear of missing out. To be modern is to be assailed at all times with news of every latest beheading, bank run, government fiasco, film premiere, mass shooting, lasagne recipe, guerilla movement, nuclear mishap and sexual indiscretion to have occurred anywhere on the planet in the preceding minutes. We are always connected and always aware. The average twelve-year-old has access to two hundred million more books than Shakespeare.
Nostalgia
Modernity, so keen to wipe away all that came before it, has unleashed a torrent of nostalgia. Never before have so many longed to have lived in an age other than their own. Modernity has bred elaborate fantasies of simpler lives on South Sea Islands, Native American teepees, and Arabian medinas.
Envy
Modernity has told us that we are all equal and can achieve anything: boundless possibility awaits every one of us. We too might start a billion dollar company, become a famous actor or run a nation. No longer is opportunity unfairly restricted to a favoured few. Yet if success is merited, why do we remain mediocre? The psychological burden of a so-called ordinary life has become incomparably harder - even as its material advantages become ever more available. Social media is an industry generating envy.
Dissatisfaction
We are conditioned to want more and better in just about every area of life. Whether it is educational accomplishment, a larger house, a fancier car, the perfect cappuccino, a constant appetite for new clothes, the latest smart phone, or simply wanting more money, we are geared to getting more of what we want. Such insatiability inevitably breeds dissatisfaction. The acquisitive drive can never be satisfied because it feeds on itself. In addition, material goods play at most a minor role in making us happy.
Loneliness
Modernity has in a practical sense connected us to others like never before but it has also left us frequently emotionally bereft, late at night, on our own, in a corner of a diner, like a figure in an Edward Hopper painting, staring out at the darkness within and without. We fall asleep in high-rise apartments with views onto the distant headquarters of banks and insurance firms - and wonder if anyone would notice if we died.
Pretence
We are asked to smile continually, to hope against hope, to have a nice day, to have a lot of fun, to cheer on holiday and to be exuberant that we are alive. Modernity has stripped us of our primordial right to feel melancholy, unproductive, surly, in despair and confused. It has done us the central injustice of insisting that happiness should be the norm.
Fortunately, we do not need to suffer alone. Our condition - though it presents itself to each one of us as a personal affliction - is at heart the work of an age, not of our own minds. By learning to diagnose our condition, we can come to accept that we are not so much individually demented as living in times of unusually intense and societally-generated perturbance. We can accept that modernity is a disease - and that understanding it will be the cure.