Looks like the cat is out of the bag — someone outside the fraternity has figured out that ham radio is an aging hobby…

With the Internet at the cutting edge of communications, amateur radio - the term refers to its noncommercial status, not the skill level of its practitioners - is turning a bit gray. The average age of the 659,000 licensed ham operators in the United States is in the 60s, according to the American Radio Relay League, a national association for enthusiasts, based in Newington, Conn.

The Framingham radio club has about 80 dues-paying members, but "maybe two or three" are younger than 40, said Gordy Bello, the club’s president. "That’s a major concern for us in the hobby. We go to the annual conferences and see the same people, but we’re all a year older."

Amateur radio will never be able to attract enough young people to replace all the oldsters who are going to fade out over the next decade. That fact doesn’t stop clubs and individuals from seeking a solution to the conundrum and I don’t think that it should. Heck, the band on the Titanic continued to play as the big boat slipped beneath the icy waters.

I admire the fortitude of those who stand firm in the fight, but for the most part they have overlooked the most obvious clue of how things like this work:

In the early days of radio, it was the youngsters who first embraced the technology and its possibilities while the older folks came along — grudgingly at first, and then at a faster clip when it became obvious that the field could be made profitable.

It simply doesn’t work the other way around.

Cool is the birthright of youth – and older folks will never be able to convince younger folks that something is cool; it requires youthful self-discovery to become a contagion to a generation.

Any possible solution will require recognition of this keystone principle.