You said the magic keyword: "curiosity", when it comes to computers and tech at least. Something that I find severely lacking among - for lack of a better term - Gen Z.

It's the difference between hackers and users. You probably don't rebuild your car's transmission and don't build your own long-distance radio, but there are people that do it for fun. However, there was a time when both drivers and operators consisted mainly of people that hacked on cars and radios. Some of the hackers were involuntary hackers and gladly became users when cars became appliances.

The same applies to PCs. Gen X and older Millennials had to become hackers just to get the sound working in their newest game, so if you saw a guy on IRC you knew he was a fellow hacker. Now everyone is online, including people who would simply not use a PC back in the 80's or 90's. They can afford to treat their personal computing devices the way I treat my personal commuting device: fuel goes into this hole, I need to consult the manual to open the boot to top up window washing fluid, the rest I happily delegate to a professional. But the hackers are still there: grease monkeys, DXers, hackers proper.

The youth of today simply don't have it in them! Unlike us back then, they're just not as cool, not as strong, not as smart...

This complaint is as old as mankind and has always been wrong. It seems to be a feature of human thinking that we glorify the memory of our own youth.