As resident expert in A Levels (as I’ve just got the results for my A2 exams - ICT-B, Business-B, Product Design-C, General Studies-C which I’m happy with)

I always get slightly annoyed when people say that the exams are getting easier (which I realise you are not - so thank you) because that’s like saying the effort put in wasn’t worth it.
Coursework doesn’t actually make it any easier (for me at least), at first it seems as if it might do but there is a lot of work that needs to go in. Getting the work back after its marked in order to improve it only applies in some subjects depending on teacher, some are happy to do this but some others do not, nor do they read any of your coursework in order to give you direction completely related to your own, but they do help in a general way.
I’ll agree on the internet side - Google is quite a bit of help, along with Wikipedia.

So, I guess I agree with most of what you’ve said - exams arent easier, we may not be vastly cleverer but we certainly have access to a lot more information which may help us to improve our knowledge easily - but this doesn’t necessarily come easily, most teachers don’t like wikipedia etc and find it inaccurate but that’s their problem in my eyes

And don’t forget the hard work bit - I know my experience is very limited but young people certainly appear to put in more exam focused hours than I did!