That had a lot to do with it. Consumers were not used to getting cheap electronics yet nor was collecting media normalized except LPs and Cassettes (mid-80s). Stuff was expensive and people just didn't buy as much of it.
We had a VCR really early cause my father worked at GE in the early 80s in a TV/VCR/Cable TV division. He got the VCR free I think at work. The only time we got new movies was when one of his co-workers would bring a VCR over and they would hook the two up and pirate movies. FWIW that early VCR lasted 20+ years.. it was built like a tank and I remember tearing it apart in the 2000s along with a broken Samsung from the early 2000s and comparing the two and it was pretty fascinating how things had changed.
I think a lot of us who were 80s kids who can practically recite Star Wars got that way cause we had a very small collection of movies cause they were so expensive. We had the 3 SW movies and Superman 2 and I watched those over and over.
Computer equipment was the same way, just about out of reach for most. My dad moved into network equipment and internet stuff by the mid 80s and we had a PC or Mac almost all the way through the 80s but it was always a loading dock discard that my father would grab from work before the computer went into the trash when they upgraded. I don't think he ever paid a dime for a computer till about 1993. When I went to college in 1995 I bought a laptop and it was an obscene purchase for an 18 year old, I could have bought a pretty nice used car instead.