There is the big picture, and then there is the RPoL picture.
DarkLightHitomi:
I find real life has gotten more and more intense.
Yes it has, for the better and for the worse.
In my college years, tuition at our flagship state school was $270
per year. Room and board in a double dorm room was $412 per semester. But, then, I earned between $1.50 and $2.70 an hour.
Beginning salary for an engineer with a BS was $800 per month. There were places to rent for $100 per month. Computers used punched cards.
There were geeky Avalon Hill board games, but mainstream games were few- other than card games. Role playing hardly existed. People got together to talk and to do things in their downtime.
Now, with inflation, people earn more. But, the difference between real cost, and the cost of convenience, has multiplied. Starbuck lattes? Houses and cars? Gadgets and vacations? What you now get can cost
a lot more.
Media is now everywhere, but it all consumes our time. People are more apart now, with their phones, social media, and electronic games. All of this costs a lot more too.
RPoL, and the like, costs time. However, many young players have short attention spans and viewpoints. The next game will be better, so why stick out the existing one? Composing at a keyboard, or even dictating it, takes too much time. It's even too much trouble to send a PM to the GM that you will be away, or have lost interest.
Much of our society has changed for the better in the last fifty years. But, in many ways, its demands, and choices, are now more difficult, whether in the big picture or in the small.