From an environmental perspective, this kind of minimalist lifestyle actually seems quite healthy. They don't drive, and I assume they don't fly or buy a lot of stuff, so their carbon and other resource footprint is small. They don't take up much extra space, so they reduce suburban sprawl and land required for housing. They probably won't have kids, which further reduces their environmental impact. Maybe we should encourage more people to live this way.
I guess it's just not ready yet.
Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror. Life is meant to be lived; the purpose of life is at least eudaimonia, not slowly rotting away in front of a computer.
Many video games similarly skip time to focus on heroic moments. You don't role-play the 10,000 hours studying tomes at Hogwarts to become a 1st level wizard; instead you start the adventure at graduation, or at most do a training montage.
Nah, the grandparent knows exactly well the good old times were the decades of toil and hardship. The kids won't get it if the grandparent tells these core truths anyways, until they live it.
The problem is sustainability.
A virtual life cannot sustain itself indefinitely, and is not very robust. If money runs out or a tragedy occurs, it will be a scramble to get a job and interact in the real world. A virtual life does not contribute to society (if we mean a purely passive virtual life), and if people start adopting it en masse we'd be in trouble.
As far as I can see, we could simply try create a virtual life (or any kind of activity) that both is sustainable, and gives an interesting, engrossing life experience.