I think attention spans have shortened (which is arguably devastating for maths), and the materials considered "state of the art in modern pedagogy" are the ones that take that into account in ways that a book from 1987 does not.
So maybe kids has problems focusing partially due to modern pedagogy? Every word you write down has a cost to the reader, and the less attention span the reader has the more that cost matters. Drown them in too many words and they will just zone out since their attention span didn't last long enough for them to reach the important parts of the text.