I completely agree with what you said. Media is putting the fear on you. It'll turn into.. 'Whether you think you can or you can't, you're already right.'. People will fail simply because they think they will.

Just to note: Facebook just had 1 billion unique users in 1 day (2015). The year 2000 only had 350+ million INTERNET USERS.

It doesn't help that we are reminded by our predecessor's to watch out for the impending doom (something that might not have been expected). In the scheme of things, the context of where technology/internet was at the time was completely different to now.