On Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 7:14:10 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Time is the usually the issue. My son stopped playing soccer due to the time commitment. The ratio of play to windshield time was not favorable. Best guess is traveling to a soaring site or soccer activity is pretty much the same. Often we'd travel 5 hours round trip for a 69 minute game where the kid plays half. At least with Soaring you can travel 5 hours round trip and take a few tows to balance the travel to play ratio a bit.

If a kid or anyone travels more then 2 hours round trip to fly for 30 minutes my guess is it gets of real fast. At least they play soccer in the rain, winds we wouldn't fly, etc which can help with scheduling. If a pilot has only saturday to fly and the WC is not good or the op doesn't run the pilot is unable to get his fix. Sometimes they can trade days with family but if not they lose out. Frustration can set in and many claim the effort to reward ratio is not worth it.

Time and convenience are most often the controlling factors for participation in recreational activities. Circling back to Gregg's original question about modern society I don't think risk aversion in modern society is as big a deterrent to soaring participation as finding a solution to the time/convenience conundrum. The advent of little motors does address the time needed and inconvenience of a landout hence the rise in popularity.

I agree with Kevin. Young people depend on parents(mostly) for transportation and most of our sites take a good bit of time to get to. It is a dedicated parent that will regularly sacrifice a day for the youngster to fly. Throw in a little brother or sister that has a soccer game on fly day and it gets harder. We have full scholarships for serious young people of limited means. They have their own 1-26 after solo, and a Libelle after private. Tows are at cost to the club. We have instructor committed to the junior program. With all of that we still have the issue of time and competing activities to contend with.
FWIW
UH