For a while I was frustrated that parts are hard to find. No one builds any more. The HAM operators have died of old age. ETC!
I've come across quite a few radioham sites, ño idea if any of them are younger folk taking up the hobby anew. There is a guy down the road from me with a ham rig, large antenna in the back garden ( don't ask what kind, radio isn't my forte ) anyway my point was that I think he's only in his late forties.
Then I found that many of the applications on my smart phone are made by school kids. Games are made by "us". We are still making things. Just in software. I have gone to some of the "makers fairs". Many of the 3D printers were designed by the kid behind the table. There were robot contests.
I think the widespread availability of small cheap single board computers like Arduino raspberry pi, have reeled in a lot of new folk to the hobby. Though, for many the bulk of their knowledge will be concerned with programming or should I say coding, which seems to be the buzzword for programming now! It isn't necessary to have a great deal of electronics knowledge to get one of these devices to do something useful. I think also they may be attractive to other types of hobbyist, for example, model builders who want to animate their creations, there's also robot builders and a whole host of diy projects that could benefit from some sort of intelligent controller.
On the analogue side there's the guitar fx pedal builders, which definitely attracts young folk into the hobby. There is also quite a big community of hobbyists who build analog music synthesizers. Going by the amount of activity on diyaudio.com I'd say there are a lot of audio amplifier builders around too.
My feeling is that despite the challenges posed by trying to build with increasingly smaller parts, there is a significant wave of new people coming to this hobby. I think that with the decline of electronics magazines, that void has been amply filled and some more, by the internet. The internet has also made the procurement of components a lot easier ( even obscure ones ) In general I'm feeling optimistic about our hobby going by many of the comments on this thread, thanks!!