This was a style thing that tended to ebb and flow. The trend in the 2000s was to have really big watch faces but by the 2010s people were calling them “dinner plates” and it started to be viewed as kind of tacky and ostentatious. Smart watches ended up recalibrating people’s expectations but, if they hadn’t shaken things up, I think we’d be leaning towards smaller faces by now.

In fact, fashionable youths these days are wearing those vintage Casios which come in at 35mm to 39mm.

Pretty much All watch manufacturers have <40mm models.