I don't know if I would entirely characterize it like that. Much of what is bad about the modern internet is the result of very intelligent people ("the brightest minds of my generation...") maximizing and hyper-focusing on a particular form of marketing, monopolization, financialization, and profit seeking, to the detriment of basically anything else.

It's not just "more stupid people are using the internet more", it's also "very smart people have changed the way that 95% of people can interact with the internet."