> The younger generation seems to love listening at 1.2x or faster.

I do not belong to the younger generation. I refused to watch videos because it takes too long comparing with reading. But now I'm watching them at 2x. You can watch a 40 min video in 20 minutes. I'd like to compress it further to 10 min or so, but 3x is a paid option on youtube and I'm not sure I could digest English (which is a foreign language to me) at 3x.

> Meanwhile, book reading is at an all time low seemingly because no one has a preference or patience for careful study and reflection.

Oh, I read books too. But the content is different. You can't read some books at 2x. You can't listen to it on such a speed. In any book I think there are stretches of text you can consume at any speed, but sometimes you hit a dense packed information you need to think through. It happens with videos too. Like, try to watch Veritasium at 2x, you'll be forced to slow things down at least sometimes, because to get the message you need to learn how to think at 2x speed too, not just to listen.

In any case the most of videos dilute their message over tens of minutes and you can speed up things and have plenty of time to think things through while watching.