I got my first guitar when I was 11. It was 1971.
I struggled for years trying to learn to play guitar and bass. In those days I wanted to be Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page. (Even age 11 I realised that Hendrix was a world of his own, and that there was no point aspiring to that!)
I just got good enough to play bass in a band by the time I was 18 (1978).
I was still crap. Not for want of hard work or practice, but because I have little natural talent.
With the advent of technological aids to learning - the last 10 years - I've made more progress than I did in the preceding 25 years of struggling. CDs, DVDs, the web, Youtube... This stuff is GREAT.
Just because we old guys didn't have it when we started learning doesn't make it bad. It doesn't mean we have to work less hard. It just means that learning more stuff is possible for more people.
Without this broad access I would not have been able to discover instruments that have worked for me far better than guitar ever did - mandolin, fiddle, ukulele etc.
As for the folk tradition... I know and can play scores of jigs, reels, hornpipes, polkas, slides, set dances, folk songs... Some of which were taught to me in the old way, some of which I learned by ear from the recordings of The Dubliners, Archie Fisher, Tannahill Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Planxty, Bothy Band - But far more that I have learned about from the Internet.
Learning music hasn't been made easy, it has been made easIER. Horizons have been opened up, repertoires expanded.
Tunes and songs that would have sunk into obscurity and been lost have found new audiences and have been preserved.
This stuff is a miracle for music.