A lot of people believe that the children of today are unusual because they don't have the patience to read anything longer than a twitter utterance ( see Noise to Signal’s “TL;DR” cartoon), but I recall that most of the youth of my generation (I am 1977-born), also did not read any fiction books, or read most of the history and other textbooks of my class (like I did), and instead spent a lot of time playing with friends or watching television, and they turned out fine eventually. Nowadays, many kids are bound to do things that will make some of us as grown-ups think that “the generation is diminishing” but naturally, this is folly (see the Noise to Signal’s “Fire” cartoon and the comments about it), and is just indicative that you are growing more cynical.
As a matter of fact, newer generations can build on the work, knowledge, and wisdom of older generations (“Standing on the shoulders of giants”) and achieve dazzling new heights. During Hellenistic times, many people probably believed that philosophy was a useless mind exercise, that philosophers were contaminating the youth, and that they were parasites who make problems where none exist. Philosophy at the time was considered a form of cheap entertainment, and philosophers were treated with the same amount of contempt as actors, comedians and models are today.
That was all well and nice, until the Romans had a very hard time and suffered many casualties, while conquering the island of Archimedes due to the many devices and inventions which he came up with, and which were utilised to protect it.
The author of Ecclesiastes, wrote in Eccelsiastes 7:10 that “Don’t say ‘What happened to make the earlier days better than these,’ for you ask this not in wisdom.” and that was written around 300 B.C.