Personally I wouldn't be too dismissive upfront. Relevant part of the article:

But the more charitable — and, Shariff believes, more accurate — view could be related to the bystander effect.

The well-studied theory posits that people are less likely to offer help if there are many other people around. It could be because they think other people are better-positioned to help, or because they do not know what to do in an unfamiliar situation and look to others for cues to the acceptable social response.

Compare a car crash today vs in the years before everyone had a globally-connected computer with an attached high-definition camera in their pocket. Back then horrific car crashes still happened, and what did the majority of bystanders also do back then? Just stood and watched.