Just to play devils advocate:
Is Instagram really deserving of such animosity? The photos stay on the app, or get placed on Facebook. I can't think of any Instagram photos making it to the bookshelves by people who think they are competing against career photographers and artists. The photos remain amongst the digital network with likeminded connections. Second, if it makes the user enjoy the experience of taking photos and sharing them with friends, I say power to them.
Michael wrote two articles that I think are pertinent to this discussion. First, he wrote of a fun couple dollar mini digi camera that he said was a blast. Second, he wrote about how he doesn't care if there are 50 pictures of a sunset, because the experience of being there and taking the photo is the important part. I believe the article was on postcard photos.
When I purchased my first "real" camera, it was when digital was booming and film was still lingering. The debates were more often than not coming from self righteous advocates on both sides who spoke not about the medium, but what photography means and should be. This is what I see now with negative comments in this thread. In my opinion, this makes you condescending and more self-righteous than the Instagram or Holga crowd. I've never heard this done the other way around, or heard an Instagram user talk negatively about another picture of a bird.
In any case, having a generation experience the pleasures of creating what they believe to be art (I stress they, because who are you to say it isn't?) can only be a good thing. If Andy Warhal can call soup cans art because he says it is, then hipsters have every right to snap a picture of clouds and enjoy it fully.
Michael