I think the problems is much more ingrained than just vapid consumption of social media and is acutely severe in America.

In America you're taught that you can be whatever you want to be, all you need to do is work really hard and you'll get the life you want. In fact you deserve the life you want if you work. People who don't get it obviously didn't work enough.

For all the shit millenials get, who decided we all needed to feel special? Who told us just go to college for anything, you just need the degree and the experience? Boomers DID actually have it that easy. They mostly all got what they wanted the think they are special for it.

But most of us really aren't special. As George Carlin once said, "Think about how stupid the average person is, now realize half of people are even dumber than that." But now we all have a platform that lets us tell other people our views, and have others validate us whether what we say is true or not. To me this is where the root of anti-intellectualism starts. Why should I listen to the guy with 20 years of research on the topic if it makes me feel bad to be wrong when I can have Jim Bob and 6 other people tell me I'm gosh dern right! I don't think things are necessarily that different now, but people's ego and sense of entitlement has gotten swolen in echo chambers and is now choking all of us.