Supposedly, it is a deliberate attempt to keep up the interest of younger viewers, who are used to a faster, more fluid visual environment. To them, the pacing we find comfortable looks as awkward and old fashioned as the exaggerated gestures and dialogue of old time movies does to us.

I've noticed this on TV, too. The camera lingers less on each shot, and jumps with less transition to separate scenes. No pan, dissolve or fade so you'll have time to think over what you've just seen. You have to stare at the screen continuously or you'll miss something. The way people stare at computer screens.

The visual medium is open to all sorts of psychological trickery that is designed to operate on us in subtle ways. For example, on several nature and science shows I have seen scenes that must have been computer-generated effects (like visuals of spacecraft maneuvering around a planet). Yet the images often have lens flares and diaphragm shadows added to them, so they will look like they were shot with a film camera. I've even seen animated effects like dinosaurs kicking up dirt and mud that sticks and splashes onto the non-existent camera lens that is "photographing" them.

My favorite is the History Channel. Sometimes they will show you a film clip of an event that happened a long time ago, like a Biblical scene or a Civil War battle, the clip is often selected from an old silent black and white movie with jerky motion, hokey costumes and makeup, and grotesque overacting. I guess that is supposed to subconsciously communicate to us the antiquity of the scene. Or maybe kids today just don't realize movie cameras were not available to Matthew Brady.