I think the apostrophe is beginning to mutate

Don't want to sound too pedantic, but what's happening to the apostrophe these days? I find myself giving constant speeches to kids about it. I also find myself talking more and more about it, as if it were some sort of animal facing extinction.

I admit I find its presence in my surname a bit spooky at times. I have almost given up using it online because it almost always gets rejected. It causes all sorts of strange stuff to happen.

Should it be removed? Is there a point in punctuation?

This week I had an odd apostrophe moment:

I was marking the jotters of one class. I couldn't help notice the dearth of apostrophes. They just didn't feature in this class consciousness. Where were they? Had they crept silently out of their jotters?

It scared me a little. Then I found them. They were lurking in groups in the next set of jotters I picked up -different year group, different homework. Gathered in group's around letter's and sentence's. Picking on 'it's' whenever they appeared.

It's worrying me. Is the apostrophe mutating? Is it... alive?