I think the newer generation of people interested in crafts are interested in "making" objects by whatever means it takes to get to the end goal. Technology and access to resources has opened up a world of possibilities that do not require one to be specialized to explore many different techniques and media.
Your disdain should probably be aimed at the educational system that made elementary school students take "arts and crafts" class where the curriculum was centered around macaroni art and pinch pots. Students aren't being exposed to proper craft in schools, and thus the meaning of "craft" is diluted to younger people. "Make" is the new "craft". Whatever connotations you choose to put with that is on you, but in the end we're all out here to make cool stuff and share it with the world.
Paragraph 1- please, go on, I need something more in-depth than this to accept the notion of being referred to as a maker. It is being specialized in an area (or in as many different areas as one desires) that I am referring to, the mastery of that specialization through time and practice and improvement that leads me to confidently refer to myself as a woodturner, or a photographer (two of my areas of long-time interest). Calling myself a maker, that's too easy, too vague. It's here today and gone tomorrow. There is little commitment to the craft.
Paragraph 2- I can ask this question on good authority, because it dates me: when in the last 50 years have, as you point out, elementary schools had the resourses, including money and trained staff, to teach something more than macaroni art and pinch pots? (When in the last 20-30 years have middle and high schools invested in what we used to call "industrial arts", shop class, where many of us here fell in love with woodworking, if not as a vocation, at least as an avocation?) Macaroni art and pinch pots, though, aren't the end goal. The end goal is to exercise the early stages of creativity and even problem solving in a young child's mind. Now, let's say that child falls in love with macaroni art and grows to make it their life's work, wouldn't they hope to grow and succeed as a (made up word coming) "macaronist", a defining term of achievement vs. being called a maker?
"Makers" of the world, allow yourself credit where it is due to you. Potters, weavers, and glass workers, leather workers and stone sculpturers, 3D printer artisans and iPad painters, you've put in the time and efforts, wear that badge with pride and honor, you deserve it. I am a woodturner, not a maker.
