This significant growth is largely due to visual (graphic, video and 3D content). The steadily growing popularity of visual means of transmitting and exchanging information is considered by some to be evidence of the degradation of human abilities against the background of technological progress. Others, on the contrary, see these processes as a natural reaction of perception to the evolution of communication technologies and see no cause for alarm. Under the cut, an attempt to comprehend the existing views on changes in user behavior with the growth of interest in visual content, to understand the influence of trends in the development of visual communication.
The Impact of the Commercial Sector and the Problem of Buying Speed
Loot, as many know, triumphs over evil. For this reason, most of the content trends today originate as e-commerce trends. The massive love for visual content is no exception. When it comes to getting information about a product quickly, the user intuitively chooses the method that will allow him to get an idea of the product faster.
Supporters of the "degradation" paradigm believe that the culture of modern consumption is such that customers do not really want to spend hours trying to understand hundreds of characteristics, to think about the meaning of what is written in datasheets. At the same time, visual content immediately gives an idea of the appearance of the product, which for many turns out to be one of the most significant criteria.
In part, this opinion is confirmed by marketing research on the behavior of users of online stores. There, a significant part of users is limited to information about 2-3 of the most significant characteristics, and the rest of the time they look at photos on product pages or video reviews that do not contain detailed information about the characteristics.
Opponents of the regressive hypothesis point out that there is not a single representative study on this topic, and user behavior itself is not typical for all market segments. For example, when choosing computers, smartphones and other sophisticated devices, buyers' attention is usually focused on the characteristics, and some sellers do not even bother to post decent quality photos in sufficient quantity.
Also in this sense, the emergence of new formats of visual content is interesting, such as VR tours for real estate sales, AR for offline stores and 3D technology reviews. All these formats involve interactive interaction with content, with the receipt of detailed text information about the characteristics of a product or object.
For example, 3D reviews of laptops from the REVIEW3 company contain detailed models of laptops, pointing at the interface, you can see text information about it. AR solutions for offline retail work in a similar way, they have the ability to receive information about the characteristics of the device, without looking at the datasheet, immediately on the smartphone screen. VR solutions in real estate also allow the provision of additional text and audio information that complements the idea of a potential buyer about the property.
It is important to note here that all these types of content, according to marketing and scientific research (links), have a higher conversion rate compared to the usual photos and videos. That is, most likely, for the buyer, speed and clarity do not compensate for the information content.
Disputes about effectiveness in training
Educational traditionalists are convinced that classical teaching methods with a minimum of both digital and physical visual content are most effective. They believe that the lack of additional illustrative examples and obtaining information from dry scientific texts contributes to the development of cognitive abilities. The presence of visual examples that work at a speculative level makes learning too simple, as a result, the brain supposedly creates less persistent foci of arousal.
Their opponents are convinced that the clearer the material, the more information will be assimilated, and also that the dryness of scientific texts only complicates the understanding of the educational material or problem. The latter promote the idea that modern teaching methods will allow pupils and students to get a comprehensive understanding of the subjects and phenomena studied through visualization in VR, AR and 3D content.
At the moment, there are studies that objectively confirm that with the presence of visualization, much more information is assimilated. Thus, it can be stated that a person better remembers information presented in the form of visual content, compared to text or auditory.
In my opinion, visual content is indispensable in the study of anatomy and physiology, technical disciplines, physics, chemistry, and refusal to use it only delays the training. At the same time, it should be noted that the ability to understand complex texts and dry scientific information really contributes to cognitive development. Breaking through per aspera ad astra, biting into dry scientific texts, students train imaginative thinking, the ability to generalize and analyze in an attempt to comprehend and present what has been written instead of using ready-made visual content. This is how new neural connections are created, including in the structures of the brain responsible for cognitive processes.
Blogs and social media
Another segment in which the use of visual content is evidently growing is blogs and social networks. Obviously, from predominantly textual resources, they are increasingly becoming visual. Today, textual and auditory information is perceived not as basic, but as auxiliary, complementing visual content.
Comparison of the dynamics of growth of the share in the structure of world data of classical and new social media demonstrates the situation well. For example, Facebook, which relied on various types of content and an abundance of services, won its first billion users in competition in 7 years of its existence, while TiK-Tok, a platform that focuses users on primitive visual content, gained the same number in 3 years. Before that, several years were associated with the rapid growth of the Instagram audience, also with predominantly visual content.
As a conclusion
Such results only indicate that visual content is the main way of obtaining information, and also that the most preferred form of communication also involves a visual component. Moreover, the user is more likely to prefer not a static, but a dynamic image (that is, a video or some kind of interactive format, such as a 360photo, VR tour or 3D review. In other words, we have become witnesses and participants in the media consumption revolution. as it seems to me, not even one in the last 10 years.
And like any revolution, i.e. there are both positive and negative sides to rapid, radical change, ubiquitous visualization. I am not ready to take the side of those who argue that the abundance of visual content leads to mass degradation, and I believe that this is a completely natural evolution of content, due to the peculiarities of human perception, on the one hand, and technical progress, on the other. Meanwhile, it must be admitted that there is a healthy grain in the reasoning of traditionalists, working with complex, dry texts actually stimulates the emergence of new neural connections, the development of imaginative thinking, fantasy, promotes quick adaptation to unfamiliar texts and the ability to isolate and assimilate the main thing in large quantities information. I would be grateful for the opinions of readers on this score in the comments.