Chiming in here as "the voice of the youth", given five pages of comments so far and the few youngest responders are in their mid-late 30s - I am 26. Had this poll been made a year or two ago I would have qualified for the exotic "25 and under" age bracket, of which we only have two respondents so far.
I started when my mother passed down her Nikon D90. She was never that deep into photography and jumped as soon as iPhone cameras became good enough for her needs. I shamefully took a lot of photos BUT never took the time to learn the fundamentals until the pandemic arrived. I went on a road trip with a friend to visit a bunch of touristy spots along the Rockies, which were completely deserted due to travel restrictions. It was magical, but my photos were beyond mediocre. I felt ashamed and started honing my skills afterwards.
Transient orcas ~2017, probably my first wildlife photo with a proper camera. Ugh, no post-processing, and settings were all over the place.
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There have been many comments and hypotheses about what the younger age groups are doing with photography, so here is my perspective.
First, overall cost of entry. "The numbers might be bigger but so is today's pay" is just objectively not the case. Pay does increase but the cost of living is outpacing it by a factor of 5 or more. Cameras, which are not living essentials,
are even worse. You can even say that the affordability crisis ALONE could account for why so many people don't bother with photography when they are still struggling to put food on the table. On the flip side, the used market has never been better: various online sale platforms allow gears to change hands easily at both local and international scales. The transition to mirrorless also lowers the entry cost to DSLRs significantly. However, used market sales are not captured by many brand surveys, but they at least contribute to brand loyalty and exposure.
Second, younger age groups are still getting into photography. Even film has its resurgence despite the cost of film production and processing being higher. They are just not here. All traditional forums, of any subject, I have been to are universally maintained by people above 30. Younger photographers use YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, and even recent niche offshoots like Cara and Vero. Facebook, while still popular in many countries (e.g., Viet Nam), is already considered "boomer" in the Western youth demographic.
And, unsurprisingly, even those who are into photography are seldomly into wildlife. Landscape, sure, especially with drone photography being so popular, but wildlife is a different beast. Wildlife photography has the highest entry investment, in both $, skills, and time, of any genre (potentially only rivalled by deep-sky astrophotography), with an abysmal ROI. There is a reason why many members remain hobbyists and only entered the genre in their 50s. My circle is very biased toward wildlife because (a) many grew up near nature and/or (b) work on animals (veterinarians, biologists, paleontologists, etc.), but as a whole each generation has become less exposed to nature.
Children in urban areas have increasingly become more indoor due to a combination of factors, from a decrease in child-friendly public spaces, increased sheltering from risk-averse parents, increased schooling pressure, etc. There is also less nature to go around, which is not talked about much because of the shifting baseline syndrome: you don't realize how much wildlife has been lost unless you have observed an area for years or dig into population surveys. Habitat degradation/fragmentation, wildlife poaching, urban expansion, and climate change all play a role in disconnecting the average person from nature further. My local senior naturalist remarked how it now took him twice as long to drive out to a natural area compared to just 20 years ago when we were out birding together.
Happy birthday!
