For me personally, as a man in his early 50s, of course film was the only option when I started. And I started young, learned on my dad's Ikonta in the late 70s. By the time I was six, I was actually absent from my official school class photo......because I took it. I did take one on a timer where I attempted to run and join my classmates but I didn't get there in time and the teacher thought he'd heard the camera click later than it did. I first tried home development circa 1980. I was that gifted, polymath child who burned out....not to blow my own trumpet too much but I was also a musical prodigy on the violin, gifted at maths, physics, foreign languages, creative writing and electronics. By age 11 I'd hand built a 4 track recording studio in my bedroom. Towards the end of my time in school, I did burn out.
Anyhoo enough of my biography. I am an outlier in that I took to fully manual photography very early on and couldn't really see the point in point & click cameras of any description. "Press the button and we do the rest"....where's the fun or challenge in that? And I admit, part of the reason why I still do film photography is because it can be a challenge. These days, while people are no longer aghast to see a film camera out and about....they are quite sceptical that I'll get any results in some of the places I use them. Or in the choice of equipment. These days I sometimes like the simplicity of a box camera and the challenge of using it's limitations to create something a more sophisticated camera could not.
But I also kept up with digital, and with 90s film SLRs...so the change from knobs and buttons to menus didn't faze me. Now, I prefer my knobs and buttons but I don't need to read all of that 500 page manual to use the menu on a DSLR or mirrorless camera. For those coming to photography with such a camera either totally new, or from a history of pre-1990s film cameras....there's a lot to learn. It's not as intuitive as a few rings and dials with numbers printed on them....at least my generation and those which came before find those intuitive.
From what I can glean from younger friends and from talking with retailers....the young folk driving the resurgence are discovering this all new and trying to learn....often starting with something easy to use. I leant a 22 year old friend a really simple 110 camera with built in flash a couple of weeks ago and she got some nice shots composition wise. I've now lent her a Halina 35X because it's more complex but basically no worry if it gets damaged....on which she's going to photograph Pride in London next month. That kind of story, progressing from something simple to more flexibility seems to be echoed in "kids" coming in for P&S cameras and then a year or so later moving up to something with more controls and which is still more tactile than most digital cameras.
Film is also less ephemeral than digital can be. One needs to expend time and effort backing up digital files for them to remain available for years/decades. With film, store the negatives with vaguely reasonable care and they will outlive you without any further effort. You can revisit them any time you like. I think that also appeals to people 20-30 years younger than me, who mostly missed out on film as kids.
I am even seeing some interest in shooting super 8, though cost of film and developing really does put people off that. Probably a pipe dream but if Kodak or someone else could get a significantly cheaper super 8 film on the market (B&W or colour it really doesn't matter)....there are people who would be buying it. Me among them, but I'm the madman who shoots std 8mm at a jazz club.
Further thoughts on analogue/obsolete tech. I work with teenagers at a school. I have a turntable in my office. For a few years now I have been seen as "cool" because I listen to vinyl records at work. I've had kids come into my office and sing along to Led Zeppelin....had a young Muslim girl just a couple of weeks ago asking "what's that amazing groove" (Miles Davis Bitches Brew). But most aren't yet similarly impressed by film photography....though they are more aware of it than five years ago. None know what a cassette recorder or reel to reel tape recorder is. Few have any memory of a VCR either. Someone found a VHS cassette on site last week and removed the tape, so it flew around the school grounds, getting stuck in trees and fences. The vast majority of the kids and even some of the staff didn't know what it was. So it's not always nostalgia. The young people driving the increase in interest in film weren't brought up on it. Nor were they likely to have been brought up with records. They have no nostalgic connection to either item.