I'm so busy helping newbies learn to fly at our club that I sometimes spend 4 hours at the field and only fly 2 batteries of my own! We have a thriving little club because we fly little electric parkflyers (mostly) near a busy road.  Folk see the planes and stop by.  We have more juniors wanting to learn than we can readily teach.

There's a saying: "You can't be what you can't see" and RC will almost never be able to compete with mainstream social media news to be 'visible' to most youngsters.  But we don't need to: we have a cool hobby that many parents enjoyed as kids, and in my experience, are keen to get into with their kids if given a chance.  But they don't see RC planes or hobbystores anymore and so don't know about the clubs.  Then too, some clubs can be pretty snobby and make learning bloody hard for youngsters.

My advice for the hobby?  Start a deliberate campaign to create small electric clubs (parkflyers or indoor) with buddybox capability by helping them partner up with a local high-school that likes tech so the club can use their indoor sports court or playing fields.  And when someone is well and truly hooked with their ARF or 3D printed small plane and wants to go big or fast - refer them to the more traditional established clubs to scratch that itch.  We have a few members that are members of our club and another one and like a few batteries through a 1m electric within spitting distance from home as an alternative to spending half the day at their other field flying their 25kg gasser twice!

It's such a diverse hobby, there really is something for everyone, but if you don't get young blood in, you go extinct!