The other fundamentally different thing is the learning tools. As a kid, I had one book on one opening and I had to sit by a board reading it to make the moves to try to dial in the learning. It was a slow and laborious process. I tried checking out another chess book from the library, but had to return it before I made significant headway. There was also one chess puzzle in the newspaper per week, which was fun, but not enough to really make a difference in my skill level.
Kids today can explore/memorize many openings and cover many more variations because of the online courses, some of which are even free. They can quiz themselves to ensure they dial in the move orders. And they can access hundreds of thousands of puzzles in rapid succession to improve their middle-game tactics and pattern recognition. And that’s not even going into having access to chess engines stronger than any human player to explore lines and learn why bad moves are bad.
All this makes studying the game so much easier, even before you test yourself against an actual opponent.
I've started using Chessable, and shot up about 500 elo in the past month. It's effectively chess books distilled into a rote memorization platforms. I picked one opening for white, two for black, and have drilled those variations to the point where I'm now dreaming chess moves. It's insane how easy it is to get very good, very quickly, with modern chess educational tools.
Chess apps having analysis baked in is a huge win for learning. I go through the analysis of every game I play now and make sure I find the moves I lost, it's improved my game greatly.
Kids today can explore/memorize many openings and cover many more variations because of the online courses, some of which are even free. They can quiz themselves to ensure they dial in the move orders. And they can access hundreds of thousands of puzzles in rapid succession to improve their middle-game tactics and pattern recognition. And that’s not even going into having access to chess engines stronger than any human player to explore lines and learn why bad moves are bad.
All this makes studying the game so much easier, even before you test yourself against an actual opponent.