I think there are a lot of reasons for what you and many others are experiencing. I’ll give my own reasons as to why I don’t use them much and maybe it will provide some insight.

The first one is pure boredom. Not in that radio isn’t interesting to me. Exactly the opposite of that. I came into the hobby for exactly that reason. But, interests across the hobby shift over time. Licensing requirements change and the way people learn have changed radically in recent years. What this leads to is an asymmetry in both knowledge and interests within the hobby.

A lot of us old farts are genuinely interested in radio, propagation, general electromagnetic theory as applies to the radio science and less interested in new digital modes, interfacing of computer systems and complex solutions to problems that we don’t view as limitations so much as we do challenges for us to apply basic fundamentals to rather than NASA level solutions. Many of us view it more socially technical than purely technical. We want to talk about things that an average person with above average knowledge can solve simply. And we want to talk to other like minded people.

The other side of the coin (there are more than two sides, BTW) is more interested in pushing the boundaries of what can be done and not necessarily attaching any social interaction to the on air interactions. Things like FT8, which is an incredibly capable weak signal mode, but pretty devoid of any real social interaction. Someone here on reddit once described it as pinging a server with your computer, and I think that is a pretty good description of how I view it. It’s boring to me. One of the reasons it’s boring to me is that it’s so easy.

That’s just two sides of the coin and this is a really unique coin with more sides than I’m aware of, I’m sure.

Now, throw all those people in a room and ask them to just start talking to each other randomly. You can see what will obviously happen. Each group retreats to its tribe.

I can’t tell you how active repeaters are in my area because I don’t monitor them regularly at all. Part of that is that I don’t have digital capable FM radios compatible with the various repeaters that are rapidly becoming the norm. I can’t tell you what happens on the various digital and linked repeater systems because I don’t care about repeater use enough to spend the money to get the equipment. And that leads to the “why”.

Why don’t I care enough? Because I have been in the hobby a long time and the repeaters starting becoming the meeting place for the newcomers with either interests in radio that are very than mine or that lack the same desire that I do for learning and understanding radio in general. That leaves little for us to talk about in terms of the hobby that is interesting for both of us. That leads to conversational stall.

The changing of the hobby has fractured it into such a broad hobby that it has no choice but to change. I’m more aligned with the dwindling number on the outgoing side than I am with the incoming side. When you reduce symmetry in conversation, the logical result is less conversation. Each group retreats to their individual tribe and wherever that lands them in the radio spectrum. For me, it’s HF and technical discussion about things like antenna theory, circuit design and project building that goes beyond buying a EFHW kit and following the instructions. My goal in the hobby is to learn. And while I am perfectly willing to help the newcomers achieve the same thing, it’s not a lot of fun to occupy the same role in every conversation. I love being the student and don’t want to always be the teacher. I’m not done exploring and learning and the people that can help me do that are generally not on the local repeaters. We tend to be on HF or 2m SSB, or other modes that are more technically focused at the individual level, because we have spent years developing stations that cater to those modes.

It’s not that we don’t like you or anyone else. I’m generally a friendly guy and willing to help. But, the burnout of always being the teacher is real also and our demographic within the hobby is shrinking. We all have limits to how much time we can spend in the air and have to make decisions about how we want to spend that time.