My theory is that the Internet exposes people to worries they may not have been aware of before and allows immersion into every facet of it (such as EMP and solar storms).
Prior to the mid-1990s, most people had many fewer information resources than today. For me growing up, my information sources were (aside from school teachers, friends and family) a daily monopoly newspaper (The Oregonian), three television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) and a small town library that was 20 miles from my house. And the occasional Time or Newsweek magazine.
The years since 2000 have also been quite tumultuous -- from Y2K to a disputed presidential election to 9/11, anthrax, wars, economic crash (that we're still not recovered from), etcetera.
History is replete with societal resilience (such as, we survived the aforementioned decade) but we are also an increasingly technology-dependent just-in-time society and many people are mindful that major disruption is just a power outage away....
A no-tech dog walk in the woods always helps soothe the worrier in me.