Yes, perhaps not entrenched, but certainly launched some decades ago.
I think that it probably began within the hallowed halls of academe, with the false (even if believed by them) posturing of feminists, assorted political and educational charlatans and a handful of women's magazines, amongst them, if an old fashion-snapper's memory serves, Cosmopolitan, which seemed to be favoured fly-with-me magazine of all the models with whom I ever travelled anywhere.
From fanciful sex advice to ridiculous shoes, that sort of example of gracious living (loving?) became the then bible of generations of impressionable young women. What can anyone expect from later generations reared from that datum line? Worse, the quality of imagery and presentation seems to have dropped with the morals. That last remark about morality might seem to be a little rich coming from myself, but I can tell you without any hesitation at all that I always treated my subjects with respect, always tried to make them look as good as I possibly could, and never, to the best of my knowledge, made an image of any one of them that I would be ashamed of their future children seeing. And no, there is not now, and never was any sub-file within a secret drawer.
The decline is language skills is fairly evident on the Internet, and much of it comes from a determined effort of some to appear ‘cool’ and ‘cutting edge’, the latter another of those phrases beloved of old stock agencies, and applied to almost any image that depended for its effect on schlock value.
But education itself is in decline: my daughter, a teacher, tells me of an occasion when she was correcting examination papers to be smitten by that feeling of déjà vu where it suddenly felt she’d already corrected that particular paper. Turned out she had: copied by several pupils, and written almost word-for-word as found on the Internet! The idiots didn’t even have the initiative to elaborate the thing a little bit in an effort to make it their own!
So, at least a couple of lost generations, to be followed by – what?
Rob C