There is another way people first encounter folk music, far more commonly than via folk rock and from long before the Anglo-American "revival" - folk pop. That was the way I first heard folk music, and it was a more wide-ranging genre than either the revivalists or the folk rockers ever contemplated. The Andrews Sisters in Yiddish, Eartha Kitt doing Turkish, Mary Hopkin using Russian folklore. The most prominent performer in the UK doing that today is Ed Sheeran, and he must outsell everybody performing on the British folk club circuit put together. A constructive response to what he's doing would help.