I was involved in this "scene" in the late 80s/early 90s. If I were the same age I was then today, I doubt very much I'd have gone down the same route because of how much the world has changed.

Back then I was using a Commodore 64 hooked up to a tv with a modem (starting at 300 baud and moving up from there); hacking (in the phrack sense) and "phreaking" allowed me to access a much wider world of information and computer resources than I otherwise would have had. Access to "real" computers that can run C compilers! Access to instant communications with people around the world!

These days this sort of thing is no big deal; you can buy a veritable super computer for less than a hundred bucks and run a free OS on it with a full developer ecosystem, worldwide calling is essentially free, the modern Internet gives you access to more free information than anyone could possible consume. But back then, as a 12-18 year old (without parents who worked in CompSci academia or such) all of that was unattainable by legal means, thus the hacking.

The "groups" for me were a secondary thing and a means to share knowledge (again, prior to the web and easy access to ridiculous amounts of information) and they aren't really needed anymore for my personal use case (though I'm not suggesting mine is the only use case, I know a lot of people who were certainly more into it for the social aspects, which still exist today).