The modern world is more complicated and difficult to navigate. It is also increasingly abstract and we don't (collectively) do a great job with helping our youth really understand the connection between those abstractions and reality.

My father got paid in cash for many years while in the Army. Today, a lot of employers require you to have a bank account and only pay by direct deposit. My oldest son likely has dyscalculia. Kind of like a dyslexic doesn't deal well with reading, he doesn't deal well with numbers. I gave him cash and made him do the household grocery shopping for a while. It helped him wrap his brain around budgeting.

Now he can cope with a debit card but that would have been a disaster if we had skipped that first step of helping understand in very concrete terms the relationship between money and material quality of life. I think a lot of young people get a bank account, get their paycheck deposited and just cannot relate these abstract numbers to the need to eat all month, among other things.