I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts:
While the graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset.
Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham license for over a decade - since my 20s. We're creeping in to middle age now, and are somewhat past killing anything. We need Zoomers - Gen Z to be interested, and the first step is probably not mislabeling them as millenials!
That said, there's a robust discussion to be had around this topic. I absolutely love my hobby, the things it makes me do and the constant stream of projects it gives me, but one day I do fear there won't be any folks on the radio for me to talk to at the end of the projects.
I've got friends in the local hacklab interested, and I'm trying to set up a /good/ station there to let us play, teach and share more with people who aren't licensed... but it's really just a slow, expensive passion project!
Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham license for over a decade - since my 20s. We're creeping in to middle age now, and are somewhat past killing anything. We need Zoomers - Gen Z to be interested, and the first step is probably not mislabeling them as millenials!
That said, there's a robust discussion to be had around this topic. I absolutely love my hobby, the things it makes me do and the constant stream of projects it gives me, but one day I do fear there won't be any folks on the radio for me to talk to at the end of the projects.
I've got friends in the local hacklab interested, and I'm trying to set up a /good/ station there to let us play, teach and share more with people who aren't licensed... but it's really just a slow, expensive passion project!