Glenn, I think you are correct in your observation that young people are becoming more visual as time passes. However, in my experience the phenomenon started with the advent of TV and has been steadily progressing since. I was in my teens before my family got a TV and so reading was the only way or me to obtain most information. To this day, my wife and I don’t have a TV set in the house. My sister, on the other hand, is a quintessential baby boomer if ever there was one. She grew up with TV and is now a continuous user of the internet, social media and her smart phone. My son grew up with computers, earns his living with them and has difficulty imagining a world without. My granddaughter, now 18, can’t conceive of a world without smartphones and Utube.

I spent 25 years teaching at the university level and saw the shift from reading and writing to the visual over the years. Before I retired 20 years ago students were starting to complain if lectures weren’t on PowerPoint with video supplements. They also would complain if lecture notes were not put on the course website. Quite different from my college days.

Fortunately, I retired before I had to develop websites for the courses I taught.