Yeah, forgot bicycles- an excellent learning device.
The big change for youngsters today is that electronic devices do not have discrete components but microprocessors and computers.
No tubes to take to the tester at the drugstore, no capacitors and resistors to check with a meter.
For my grandparents nearly everything was home-repairable, for Boomers most things were, for my grandchildren only some things are repairable. So I sympathize with someone today assuming ‘we have to replace it’, though I regret they are not assuming they “can do”.
My point is that something else has changed, everything didn’t become electronic, the electronics are extras, that we were not repairing as kids in the past, anyway.
Boys in the past had the energy and curiosity and drive to do many things, and they were not repairing their TVs, telephones, and movie projectors and cameras, and microwaves, and all the other new “electronics”, but they were building rafts, go carts, tree houses, forts, and repairing many of the same mechanical things that they are using today, they were robbing components and little engines and gears, to fulfill projects from their own imagination, parts that are even more readily available today inside of our throw away devices.