It's not clear that this phenomenon (if it exists) has anything to do with the relaxing of educational content norms. If anything, the technological advancement

It's not clear that this phenomenon (if it exists) has anything to do with the relaxing of educational content norms. If anything, the technological advancements caused by that 'sense of duty and progress' have led to a reduction of the average 'Western' attention span to the point of requiring reductive and trivially engaging educational media. That's probably not really the case either, but it seems just as valid of a theory without considerably more rigorous investigation.