This, with the addition that populations tend to demonize whatever is new. Then it was TV, then it was cable TV (MTV is evil!). Rock music, the internet, smartphones and tablets.
But in the past, they thought reading would ruin a generation and ruin their memories (it did kill a tradition, but we really just remember different things). Chess was certainly going to dumb down a generation, and folks were seriously suspicious of the automated elevator.
Amish and Mennonite communities to a point. Places with poor electricity outside the US.
And we have some records of times before television. In fact, there are still folks alive who remember such things. Heck, I remember times before the internet. My parents didn't have cable at one point. My grandmother remembers not having television in her house as they couldn't afford it. Their parents lived without radio. Their parents wrote down their experiences.
It isn't true that we don't have such a world, it just happened before now. Maybe we won't know who is right, but no one is actually willing to give up what they have and it is rather likely that it will fall into the same doomsday predictions about the new-fangled thing as all the previous one.
But in the past, they thought reading would ruin a generation and ruin their memories (it did kill a tradition, but we really just remember different things). Chess was certainly going to dumb down a generation, and folks were seriously suspicious of the automated elevator.