I do agree that the number of everyday things that can be reverse engineered has dropped, but likely if one was so inclined to reverse engineer something, he or she would find something to reverse engineer. I would go so far as to say that the number of things that can get a 13 year old into tinkering has grown, not shrunk. The internet has opened up communities that would otherwise be unreachable to our hypothetical teen.
For my own case, had it not been for the internet, I would've never gotten into tube circuits. I never would have been able to make heads or tails of even the most basic tube amp design, even given the schematics. On top of that, I probably would've either killed myself or caused serious harm to myself if I did try to poke around those circuits without having researched it. Tube circuits can have deadly amounts of electricity in them even when they're unplugged and turned off. The same is true for old (and new?) TVs, I believe.
I'm 20. PCBs were pretty much ubiquitous by the time I was old enough to really start digging into things. That never stopped me, and I don't believe it would stop someone that's 13 now and has the inclination to take things apart and figure out how they work.
I think part of the problem is people don't know they are inclined to tinkering. If you grew up around VCRs and they broke and you wanted to try to save some money, you open it and see if you can do anything. This seems to be a common way to first start off. Nowadays you open it and immediately close it because there is no reasonable way to approach an IC or PCB without prior knowledge.
Of course there are the more industrious (and more annoying to their parents) who go on opening things that weren't broken and mess around in them. Those people are the ones who will actively go out and by arduinos. But it seems the first group is a dying breed.
For my own case, had it not been for the internet, I would've never gotten into tube circuits. I never would have been able to make heads or tails of even the most basic tube amp design, even given the schematics. On top of that, I probably would've either killed myself or caused serious harm to myself if I did try to poke around those circuits without having researched it. Tube circuits can have deadly amounts of electricity in them even when they're unplugged and turned off. The same is true for old (and new?) TVs, I believe.
I'm 20. PCBs were pretty much ubiquitous by the time I was old enough to really start digging into things. That never stopped me, and I don't believe it would stop someone that's 13 now and has the inclination to take things apart and figure out how they work.