You can call it stupidity and it keeps growing since many years. I guess TV started it. Main reasons for it are a mixture of loss of introspection and completely unrealistic expectations due to constant medial input and constant communication with peers.

You want better people? Make parents sit down and talk to their children every single day: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/diet-is-4-letter-word/2...

Of course it will take at least one generation to undo the damaged that has been done. Don't keep searching for simpler reasons or solutions. I don't believe there are any.

The rest of this post is a repost from me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12724851:

We live in the age of fear because the hose of information that floods us is constantly opened further: Letters → Telegram → Telephone → Radio → TV → Internet → Mobile Internet.

Human beings need time to manage their emotions. Time spent waiting. Time being bored. Time when NO new information, not even positive, is arriving.

We are constantly distracted and thus increasingly unable to sort out our feelings. That is the reason.

And distracted parents that can't give their children at least 15 minutes of absolutely undivided attention per day worsen their offspring's ability to manage emotions even further.

That is why Zuckerberg/Facebook's idea "just flood everyone with everything and it will get better" is dead-wrong.

What Facebook could do to really help the world is turning off it's platform for one day each week.