These kids do not appreciate knowledge and information because they grew
up
with its abundance. When I was growing up (and I am only 30), printed encyclopedia was the only research tool.
You would have been 8 years old when Encarta was launched.
I am from a small non-English speaking country. There was lack of even general books on topics because on how small the population (3.5 million). I remember I had to do a long research paper on India (history, geography, culture, religion, etc.). You would think easy - India is a big, interesting country. Surely there must be books on it. Not so much... Unless you wanted to read someone's travel impressions from 30 years ago for 300 pages. Finding the info was the biggest struggle. And so we had this 12-volume encyclopedia. And it was was like the crown jewel of our possessions. My mom forbade me to mark anything (even with a pencil) at all on the pages.
Those kids never deprived of knowledge and information will never know how
precious it is.
Eh you always hit walls sooner or later. A lot of information is still buried in libraries (the best soruce I'm aware of for theThe jewelry of roman Britain is a book written in 1996). Other stuff is behind paywalls or is commercially sensitive. Or simply doesn't exist (there doesn't seem to be a solid history of calshot castle anywhere).
You are talking about niche, specialized topics graduate students might care. Yes, there is still a lot of info locked in the dead-tree world, but anything that an average high school kid might need is in overabundance on the Internet (Wikipedia included). In fact, I am becoming convinced that for this new generation filtering the info from the flood out there will be a lot more valuable skill than finding info.