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I think it is quite popular, when talking about technology and its influence on modern culture, to focus on the negative side effects. The generation before us seems to be convinced that their childhood and young adulthood was pure and back then people lived in the moment. Relationships were stronger because there was no such thing as getting to know each other over snapchat. Some adults have this superiority complex because they think they weren't corrupted by technology. Though they might be right about the fact that we are quite dependent on our phones, I always counter attack by saying that we are smarter.
I  believe we are smarter.
I remember being a young child, and whenever i wanted to learn about a topic I had to go all the way to the library and pick a book to learn more. The amount of effort it took to just learn about any random topic I'm sure discourages people from learning. Now it takes 0.2 seconds to obtain access to almost everything about anything. The amount of questions I randomly come up through out the day is absurd, and if I didn't have the ability to answer my own questions by doing a quick google search I would probably go crazy.
Anybody can become an expert on anything.  And social media is just the door to a world of new perspectives. I have learned so much about topics I honestly didn't even know existed just by scrolling through my twitter news feed. We are more aware and more knowledgeable about a wider range of topics than we ever were. Because of this, I think that the average teen/young adult now is way smarter than the average teen/adult from 30 years ago.
Some might counter this by saying 'Well we had to work harder for the knowledge we have, making the knowledge'. I would simply say 'who cares'. Working smarter not harder is real. Furthermore, I don't think our generation works any less than older generations. I would argue the opposite. I think that school is way more challenging now because our education evolved to challenge us more because of the access we have to the internet. In addition to our education challenging us more, we challenge ourselves waay more. Because so many people are on the internet, we run into people with different view points and beliefs on a daily basis. Exposing ourselves to people of different backgrounds and core beliefs forces us to re-evaluate ourselves regularly. We have become more accepting and caring of people.
So next time you want to acknowledge your intellect, make sure to thank your instagram and twitter account, not your college education.