I would say #1 and #2 aren't true. #3 might be true - resale might be an issue since more people want automatic.
Regarding manual being a distraction...I'm in my 40s. I got my license when I was 15. The year I got my license, I turned 15 in late August, took Driver's Ed starting in Sept. and had my license mid October. My father (and his brothers) were/are all a bunch of car nuts. So I was driving as soon as I could reach the pedals in the car. My father would take me to the local dump (which was huge) and let me drive. When I was around 13, we moved to a neighborhood that was about a 2 mile oval off a main road. It was there and then that I learned to drive manual. My brother had a manual volkswagen rabbit, but was away at school. So my father (who had bought him the car) thought it would be good for me to learn to drive manual. At first I just drove in our long driveway - learned about the clutch, etc. But soon my father had me driving around our neighborhood (I know, I know - things were different then - we also had lawn darts as a game, and when we got in trouble our parents sided against us kids and made us take responsibility - the horror). I practiced parallel parking using rubber trash barrels - both on hills and on flats. I was allowed to drive anytime my father was home (I don't think my mother knew I took the car out of our yard though).
When it came time to take my driver's test, I wanted to use the manual car. Even though my father thought I would do fine, my father's only words of warning were, "if you roll back at all when parallel parking, they will not pass you". I opted to take the automatic
. I passed and got my license, and then 2 months later my father helped me buy my first car - a manual vw rabbit.
I have never owned anything other than manual (btw I'm a woman). So I don't remember ever thinking that manual was/is a distraction - it all quickly became second nature.