You raise some good points about VTTs, but on the other side, I’ll say that it also provides some tools that can make an immersive experience easier. I DM’d the first time on roll20 and got really into it.
We were doing Phandelver and I made a bunch of custom maps to supplement the default because it allowed me to have different music for each map so I didn’t forget to change it for atmosphere.
I uploaded a bunch of custom .pngs for tokens and stuff on maps.
Made handouts for monsters and important NPS so the players had a better picture of it than the small tokens.
Sound effects for events.
You can set dark vision and view distance for each character so you don’t have to keep track of who can see what.
You can put AC and HP on tokens for players and enemies only viewable by the DM for easy tracking.
You can have tokens hidden on the map that only the DM sees and can change the layer when the trap is sprung.
It actually made my fist time running a game a lot easier and the tools enabled me to be more creative as I found new things I could do. Also, I’m bad at voices so I got a voice changer program and it was much better for them than my poor attempts at sounding creepy or scary.
The purpose of libraries has simply expanded. A lot of people do still use it for books, but this being an online forum there’s likely a selection bias at play. People learn to go to the library when that’s the main place they have access to stuff, often because purchasing or finding it digitally is out of the price-range. As a consequence, those big beautiful libraries in the nice part of town are often pretty empty but the cramped one near us poor folk is full of families and their kids every weekend.
But libraries offer so much more than books. They have digital services, often with access to computers (again, mostly used by those who can’t afford a personal computer), and research assistance. Librarians know how to research and find sources and are an invaluable help when trying to find research on a topic. My local has community events where someone comes in and gives presentations or activities for kids often. Libraries are a community project that brings people together. Unfortunately, public libraries, being not for profit, don’t have extensive funds so they don’t have the reach they used to. Public sentiment has also turned away from libraries for a variety of reasons and in different ways. The capitalist-centric world-view lends to people’s appreciation for owning things and improving your own station while shying away from improving the group condition. Libraries whole purpose is antithetical to that world-view, so they’re ignored at best, actively fought against at worst.
This is, of course, an American centric rant, since that’s where I am and can’t speak to the conditions elsewhere.