For what it’s worth I think people have always been this way. I used to read during recess when I was in middle school. I usually could not wait to get back to my books. But the other kids saw this as profoundly antisocial. I wasn’t being antisocial exactly; I was pretty shy and had a very active imagination. Amusingly, the school bullies misinterpreted my bookishness as weakness. That changed when I (accidentally) knocked out a kid’s front teeth during a fight. I felt terrible about it but the bullying stopped immediately.

This undercurrent of anti-intellectualism has been around for a long time. I would just ignore the naysayers.