For me this gets to a deeper point. While there are probably some people who innately understand tough mathematical or scientific concepts, it's been my experience that learning is largely about spending enough time struggling diligently with the material until you've built a robust and correct mental model of it. Then on to exercises to see if your model breaks or holds up when strained. If you approach interactive aids and videos and images with this mindset, they can be very helpful.

I can also clearly remember times when this was not my approach, and in those times, pictures were just a lot of time saved because I didn't have to read text that otherwise would have been there.