I always wanted to fly and couldn't afford it until my fifties. I fly a stick and rag taildragger and work in IT (sort of.) Half of my colleagues are nonplussed but the youngsters reckon it must be really cool to have one's own 'plane.
I would have started learning to fly at the age of probably three if I could have afforded it. Tatty Cessna or PA28? Wouldn't have put me off. Fifteen minutes in a scruffy Auster at age fifteen was life changing (I knew it would be.) Few youngsters learn to fly. Apart from WW2, it has always been so. Good job we are all going to live so much longer then because it is a fact that real aviators don't discriminate, they fly whatever they can get their hands on, young or old. For the price of a decent light aircraft (£15,000, say,) You can buy some pretty vivid motor cars and that is where the kids are putting their money. It costs a lot to learn to drive a car as well but it is a far more useful skill.
You fly because you want to.
There was a Slingsby Motor Tutor with a current permit on Afors yesterday seeking offers of £2k.
That would give a youngster a lot of fun for the price of an old british 250 "classic" motorbike these days and no red blooded aviator could do anything less than love it and learn from it.
If we are similarly relics from a bygone age I for one won't beat myself or anybody else up about it. If flying is to go the way of the cine camera, typewriter and chemical photography, so be it. It was always exclusive; many who could afford it hadn't the drive necessary to get a licence.
More fool them.