Hmmmm ... I think I believe both articles! Higher education and social media are both in decline. Who needs critical thinking and the ability to gossip 24/7? I'm going to go rewatch Idiocracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/).
For anyone that hasn't seen it, Idiocracy goes after the present by exaggerating the future.
It's a sad but true trend that people are too busy playing World of Warcraft to understand much less resist what is going on around them: automating of warfare[0], climate change[1], police militarization[2], sources of terrorism (including JSOC ("American Taliban") killing American citizens without a trial in countries without a declared war)[3] and peak oil [4]. That's a lot of heavy shit that that isn't being addressed, which defers consequences to be much more painful sooner or later. With commodities, often the consequences are spread out gradually (epic rise in cost of gasoline) whereas others are not so gradual.
That seems far more important than whether some pre-press study is important or not.
Finally...a rational statement about what is really going on. I do think Facebook will survive, as infrastructure for the internet, but the history of all social networks says they have a time limit before they are replaced by something cooler. Right now, there is nothing better, so no one is jumping ship en masse.
