You are exactly right. This is something that is not completely new, but I think the incidents of younger generations trying to screw older family members have increased over the years. As a CPA, I have dealt with the children of both elderly and deceased clients. It's not uncommon for one sibling to try and screw the others out of their inheritence. I have seen families become destroyed because of fights over the assets of the parents & grandparents. It's the saddest thing one could ever witness.
My opinion is that the perceived increase in this behavior is a result of how lazy we are in relation to how hard our parents' and grandparents' generations worked. The WW2 generation worked much harder than the video game generation does today. You can even see this trend play out in immigrants. So many first generation immigrants work their butts off while their kids complain about not having $200 shoes or a Playstation 3.