No shock smart phones and generally accessible computers came with the dawn of the millennium and that's when things started to get bad.
Contrast to now: You're bored? Welp just sit right here on your ass and there is a literally bottomless bucket of entertainment that frankly is a lot more immediately satisfying than most of the stuff outside your house. And if you dare venture outside your house? Make sure you bring your parents because, increasingly often in the US, they can get arrested for child endangerment.
The actual cause, is of course, the phone.
I remember sweating, so I guess it was good. Anything like that anymore?
There's ways to introduce exercise even if you have to drive.
At the grocery store, I see drivers drop people right at the entrance. How about go to the furthest parking spot and walk 5 mins.
Take steps wherever you see them, usually near escalator or elevator.
Take a train to work? Get off a stop before and walk to the next station. Do it in reverse on the way home.
Lots of opportunity to be creative.
Where I grew up in Arizona (not rural at all), there was literally nowhere to go within a 15min walk.
So people don't walk their dogs? You don't always have to have a destination.
Parking the furthest from the grocery entrance is surely better than parking right next to entrance?
A public health solution that has "Step 1: Assume people have the time, energy, and discipline to introduce exercise into their daily lives" is not going to work. It really is that simple - that's not how any healthy society works.
FWIW I do think you're sharing good advice and it would solve a lot of problems if people listened to it, but the reality is this advice has been around forever. It doesn't actually make a dent where people need it most: default sedentary, car-ridden, non-health conscious parts of the country.
I'm struggling to respond to this, probably because you might be right. The cynical view of this, is that you can't help people that don't want to help themselves. i.e. Horse-water, leading.
The capitalistic meat grinder will get as much money from them as possible.
Inevitably, they will get sick, pay for outrageous priced miracle drugs (like Ozempic) or for other aliments that could be preventable and eventually die.
Sigh.