Oh stop with the gloom, this is like using tabloids as an example of how the printing press ruined us all. Ignore the tabloids, or in the case of the internet, low effort ad content. You can read good journalism from around the world if you put in the minuscule effort it takes to vet a source. The academic internet never went away, in fact it gets exponentially more powerful every year, and nearly all of human knowledge is at your fingertips for free* from Wikipedia or tools like pub med (everything funded by the NIH becomes open access after a year).

The internet has only ever been one thing: a time sink. Why waste your free time making someone else money? Cut out the commercialized internet from your life. Sink your time by learning something, keep your neck well above the irrelevant noise of social media, keep your eyes fixed on well written information from good journalists and experts in their fields, and suddenly the internet is beautiful and everything that everyone hoped for.