I periodically come across articles arguing there were no 'dark ages' as commonly understood. The argument is basically that previously underappreciated social and technological advances make the term misleading and pejorative. The wiki page on the historiography of the dark ages also says modern historians avoid the term.
However, as far as I am aware, western europe after the fall of the roman empire still lacks written records, was indeed very violent, and was ultimately so bad that even feudalism seemed like a good idea. Dark age Europe seems genuinely dark compared to what came before and after, and what was going on elsewhere at the time.
Why is it now considered wrong to think of the early middle ages as the "dark ages", or refer to is as such? The term seems apt
For one, it depended on what part of the former Roman world you were in. In post-Roman Britain, civilisation really does break-down within a generation or so of the Roman legions abandoning Britain in c.410 AD - urban life and a monetary economy disappear as does literacy in most areas, trade contracts and government essentially ends up becoming warlord rule - which can essentially be seen as a sort of reversion to the pre-Roman Iron Age. Compare that to Ostrogothic Italy where in the early 6th century a final flowering of classical Latin literature and philosophy (Cassiodorus and Boethius are at the forefront of this) takes place under the patronage of "barbarian" king Theodoric, the Roman land tax system is still intact, the aqueducts are still being repaired, great churches with spectacular mosaics are still being built etc etc. Generally everywhere in Western Europe in the long run, Roman state institutions go into decline (by c.600, taxation and standing armies have disappeared everywhere except for the Byzantine enclaves in Italy), literacy and secular learning survive though they're available to a much smaller segment of the population (in the period 550 - 750, its mostly clerics and monks who are literate, but the Frankish king Chilperic does compose Latin poetry and the Visigothic king Sigibut composes theological treatises and in both Lombard Italy and Visigothic Spain a strong written legal culture survives i.e. in order to manumit a slave in 7th century Italy you have to produce a charter) and material culture sees a drastic decline (for a sophisticated defence of the "Dark Ages" in economic life, see early medieval archaeologist Bryan Ward Perkins' brilliant yet pugilistic book "The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation"). Any talk of Dark Ages is, however, totally misplaced after 800, by which point you have the Carolingian Renaissance, which sees a great revival in lay aristocratic literacy and the study of classical texts under the patronage of Charlemagne and his successors, and the beginnings of demographic and economic recovery after centuries of decline.
To find out more, I'd highly recommend reading (to start off with):
"Empires of Faith: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500 - 700" by Peter Sarris
"Europe after Rome" by Julia Smith
"The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 - 1000" by Chris Wickham
I can't really give you an original answer to this question but I can refer you to another post where /u/fan_of_the_pikachu asked a similar question and /u/qed1 gave a pretty great answer. There's also the FAQ page that can lead you to a lot different questions and answers from the other contributors on this sub.