One of the reasons that is given very often is that Amateur radio is in
some sort of competition with the Internet. Let us look at this theory.

Here's another 'white paper' theory:

Kids & INTERNET: Instant Messager, Chat Rooms, Videoconference
in REAL TIME with your friends, Play games (Halo for example) over
a Network with your friends, send messages via cellphone to e-mail and
visa-versa, computers are cheap $300 for a P4 fully loaded at
C-shows...etc...etc...

Kids and HAM RADIO: Radios can be expensive, big antennas needed if
you want HF, all to talk to are sour old men (or retro-bigots if your on
75 Meters at night) who hate kids for the most part, packet-radio a joke
at 9600 baud (circa 1981 speed!!) compared to DSL, radios expensive to
fix if they break and most radios (except yaesu) are built like a cheap VCR
kids on ham few and far between.....etc

any questions?

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Nope. You just about covered it all.
That leaves only the holdout dregs of CB who are now getting Tech licenses
and migrating to two meters.
You can hear them every day on the local repeaters. They use CB slang such
as "hate and discontent", "make my phone go ringy-dingy", "I heard that, I
did", and the all-time favorite? "Ten four, good buddy."
They buy a Rad Shack 2 meter ht and hammer the repeaters all day long. Ask
one of them to switch over to simplex and you can hear the confusion in
their voices. "Simplex. What is that?" or, "I can't get out that far."
Oh, and for laughs just listen to the Techies as they give each other signal
reports on a repeater. They tell each other they are full quieting and have
good audio. Oh, duh!
The ultimate hoot for me was when last week a couple of Techies were
hammering the daylights out of a local repeater. One was getting out of
range and his Techie buddie suggested they move to another repeater. What
did I hear but the one Tech say to the other, "I am gonna QSY to my truck."
Lids. Lids and more Lids.

(ditttos on the Yaesu gear. I wouldn't own anything but)