I'd prefer the term experimental radio operator or such. I say that as someone who once held an amateur ticket (for quite some decades) which I got whilst I was still at school.
You're right. When I used to participate in amateur radio as a teenager, those who were not involved—usually irritated wives and girlfriends—were apt to often repeat things like 'get off that radio and help me with the dishes', or 'they're always wasting time talking unintelligible gibberish', and in my mother's case 'stop mucking about and do your homework'. I remember the taunts and criticisms well.
Listen to this YouTube audio of comedian Tony Hancock's Radio Ham. He wasn't an amateur but he summarized the prevailing attitude of many back then: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=stmSok14-IU
However, in recent years amateur radio operators have had their revenge—and it's come by the ton! With the advent of the internet Amateurs can now correctly point to not millions but billions of totally-addicted smartphone and internet users who waste endless hours texting, or talking/posting on social media—Facebook, WhatsApp, X, etc.—mostly inconsequential nonsense and drivel, or dealing in fake news that's damaging the social fabric of society. (BTW, I've no social media accounts, HN's my limit.)
Right, the very thing past generations accused amateurs of doing is now not only done by billions of people but also for millions of them their involvement is far in excess of anything amateurs would have done pre-internet. As you would be aware, smartphone, social media and internet addiction has become a serious social problem.
As an ex-amateur I'll put this on the record. Amateurs by virtue of their technical abilities in radio/electronics—skills that must meet a set minimum standard of proficiency as mandated by regulations/law by both governments and the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU)—are granted access to very valuable spectrum space. An Amateur radio license, which is only obtained after passing an examination, gives Amateurs exclusive access to many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. In effect, Amateurs have had and still have exclusive communications channels that allow them to communicate to any part of the world whenever they feel like it so long as they do so within the terms of their license, which, in brief, boils down to not causing interference or disrupting other communication users/services.
Even in this internet age this is a privilege that not even internet and social media users can boast about for they're always under the control—the fickle beck and call—of ISPs and Big Tech and the requirement that internet protocols and network hardware remain functional. On the other hand amateurs are always in full control of their stations (that's the edict set out in the terms of their licenses). It's why for over a century Amateurs have been called upon in emergencies whenever normal communications fail.
As mentioned, my dislike of names Ham Radio and Amateur do not do justice to this longstanding and valuable service, they do not reflect the true extent of the pool of talent that exists within its members. Also, amateurs are a cliquish bunch with a language and etiquette of their own and that has very distinct advantages. For instance, decades ago I used to work in the prototype laboratory of one of RCA's divisions that manufactured telecommunications, radio and TV broadcast equipment and my boss, a brilliant electronics engineer and radio amateur who also helped establish the division, employed me over other applicants because I was a radio amateur. His experience was that when employing people with equal qualifications then selecting the one that also has an amateur ticket made the best sense, as often they had a diehard interest in electronics from a very young age and thus had a much better intrinsic/core understanding of the subject. I've frequently seen this scenario played out over the years.
You ask 'Why would young people choose Amateur Radio as an interest when there are so many new STEM-type things to do (programming, 3D printing, etc.).'
I'll answer that but I'll begin by saying Amateur Radio still has a strong following and many enthusiastic followers, but I'd agree that per capita it doesn’t attract the numbers it did in the pre-internet days (especially youngsters—and it needs new blood). There are several reasons for this:
Until around 1970 those interested in electronics and who wanted it as a hobby at home had few options, that usually came down to repairing/building radios (sometimes TVs), and or Hi-Fi amplifiers. There were others, but that was mainly it. Thus, many youngsters gravitated to amateur radio, it was a sort of natural progression. For instance, the first radios I built were crystal sets, on one I picked up an amateur radio operator (by profession a grocery store manager) who lived about four miles away who I befriended, he taught me a lot. That led to me to passing my amateur ticket exam at age 14 and eventually to my career in electronics.
By the early 1980s microprocessors became the rage, back then I had an advanced S100 system with a 8085/8086 combo, it also had a Z80 board, I had to program in Assembler to get its BIOS functioning. This 'new' electronics diluted the pool of those with an interest in electronics. Also, around that time the hype around computers was phenomenal. Amateur radio got drowned in the noise. Then a decade or so later the internet and later still other distractions, social media, access to online media etc. It wasn't only amateur radio that suffered declining numbers, also the 'new' tech had hijacked interest away from many other hobbies.
So to your point about why one would choose Amateur Radio when there are so many others available. To answer that one has to ask what is it that drives a person's interest and what environment was he/she exposed to that nurtured that interest at an early age. If one has an interest in physics, that is how things really work then one has to get to grips with the hardware at its most fundamental level. One not only has to understand how semiconductors work but also resistors, capacitors and so, not only that but one must be fully fluent about how they operate. On the other hand, lounge-lizard programmers are glued to their screens programming in high-level languages, C et al, and often they don't know one end of a soldering iron from another. An amateur who doesn't get his hands dirty from hardware or the occasional belt from a high voltage anode isn't worthy of the name.
Many of us who are interested in the physics side of radio had to become good programmers whether we liked it or not. For that, engineering at uni made me learn Fortran, and later various Assemblers, Lisp and C and a smattering of others. One of my amateur friends was so good at machine code that he could just scan pages of a hex dump then make a comment such as 'I'll just change value at hex addr 'ABCD' from 'xx' to 'yy', that'll save me having to change R53 from 270kΩ to 330kΩ (I never had that level of patience). It's this inherent hands-on feel for electronics at its most fundamental grassroots level that often gives Amateurs the edge. You'd be surprised how many influential people in tech have an amateur ticket filed away somewhere even if they never mention it. And you'll often find that their interest began when they were kids. It goes with the territory.
I'm sorry that Amateur Radio has been somewhat lost in the noise, the fact is that it has many facets some of which are highly technical and many youngsters are unaware of it. I'd venture that Amateur Radio is still of importance, unfortunately, this post long so I'm unable to develop a supporting argument, I'll just give an illustration instead.
Your smartphone is by far the most advanced and sophisticated technology that you now own (years ago, I used to say that about television sets). Here's some rhetorical questions for which no answers are required. How much do you actually know about the working of your smartphone? You may have a rough idea of the goings-on at OSI levels from say levels 4 to 7, perhaps even 3. but what about levels 1 and 2? Well, let me say that to have a reasonable working understanding of those levels/hardware you need to know some quantum mechanics (at least at its practical level such as how quantum tunneling works). If you don't then you can't design the semiconductors to run the device. Such understanding is crucial in both the microprocessors and the extremely low noise amplifiers that are used in the phone's RF stages, especially the GPS receiver. Also, one needs an understanding of electrical principles including Maxwell's equations, then there's thermodynamics—one has to understand how thermal noise occurs in low noise amplifiers, the WiFi, mobile and GPS receivers. One must implicitly understand the relationship between bandwidth and noise—the thermal noise equation†, and so on. I'll bet many who think they understand the workings of a smartphone have never heard of said equation let alone having ever derived it from first principles.
What's this to do with Amateur radio? Well, the history of AR (and comms generally) is littered with the struggle to make HW perform better and various forms of noise are the enemy, amateurs instinctively understand this struggle, and you'll often find that engineers who work with noise in RF circuits have Amateur Radio backgrounds, again it often comes with the territory.
AR comes in many levels. And many of those who natter on air with seemingly little to say frequently have a deep understanding of the above topics. Whilst this understanding is usually honed fine during tertiary education you'll often find the roots of their understanding began with Amateur Radio. AR is what one makes of it, it's a hobby with a truly vast array of diverse technical aspects, and with it comes the enjoyable camaraderie of fellow amateurs.
† V(noise)=(4kTRΔf)^0.5, https://www.qsl.net/va3iul/Noise/Understanding%20Noise%20Fig...