The great novelists and great artists of today are lost in the noise. When history has thrown away the chaff they'll be visible - and people will be complaining about the low quality of their own contemporaries.
Tolstoy was famous in his day. As was Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Picasso, etc. Sure there were a few, like Van Gogh, who died before becoming recognized, but they were fractional exceptions.
Show me one great artist living today -- anyone who can compete with a Tolstoy or even a Hemingway. Below Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen are mentioned, but I don't think anyone in their right mind would put them remotely at that level. You're waiting for history and there's no sign that you'll do anything but keep waiting.
You and I will never know. But I'm betting that the contemporary distractions are no more the cause of mediocrity than the historic ones were.