Who is this "they" doing all of this? I never heard of kids doing this. I'm sure a couple around the world are doing it but definitely not the majority.
Meanwhile when I was growing up, almost everyone knew to tinker with Windows internals to get pirated games working. Almost everyone knew what an IP address was. How many today know this?
You're generalizing a generation from a small niche of tech kids.
I went to a good school in one of the tech capitals of the US and I was the only person I knew who ran desktop Linux in high school.
Tech will always be the domain of smart, ambitious nerds, almost by definition - that's who you have to be to have a shot at pushing the envelope. If you want to expand the number of kids doing it, you'll have more success expanding the number that fit that preceding definition.
I wasn't talking about tech but more on general tech know-how. Back then almost everyone had to have it to use a computer.
Now you don't need it, so people are less likely to find themselves going it it the weeds and falling in love with this as a hobby.