People are getting dumber for sure. They now expect an instant answer for everything. People no longer understand how systems are built or why they were built. Even worse, they don't even want to know because they never bother to look it up.
I stopped relying on Google Search a long time ago. Between the aggressive ads, 'pay-to-play' blog rankings, and the general SEO-spam, it’s become nearly impossible to find simple, direct answers.