It seems to me that your complaint is not so much with flat design as it is with insufficient contrast between active/selected items and other items. That can b

It seems to me that your complaint is not so much with flat design as it is with insufficient contrast between active/selected items and other items. That can be a problem with non-flat UIs as well. In any case, your point about the 20-somethings is a good one. Large portions of the web are usable only with difficulty for people with poor eyesight, or lack of experience with high-stimulation environments, or attention problems, or sensory-processing issues, etc. We see articles about making things usable by blind people, but very little about the much larger population of people who can't handle low contrast, overly busy pages, or tiny text.