I played Prince of Persia as a kid, the game is amazing for its time. But game design has evolved in these 30 years, and it shows. When we were kids we didn't have better games to play so we had to persevere with PoP.
Nowadays, if you want hard platforming you can play Super Meat Boy or Celeste and fight with your ability to perform the required movements, not with the clunky controls.
If you want to explore an unknown world you can play Hollow Knight or Ori and enjoy a much larger and more developed setting.
Neither of these games are easy, but they have much more well crafted learning curves for example. PoP simply drops you in a dungeon and you have to die there until you manage to get the timing of the jumps, while Celeste has an "easy" first level and constantly ramps up the difficulty.
If you're interested in understanding some of why Celeste is so important to a lot of people but don't feel up for playing it yourself, these two video essays are a great watch:
And in fact, I don't think anyone would be surprised if that very same teenager looks up YouTube videos about how to beat the most difficult parts, find all the secrets, and so on.
Even less like the hard old games, Celeste comes with an assist mode:
> Assist Mode allows you to modify the game’s rules to fit your specific needs. This includes options such as slowing the game speed, granting yourself invincibility or infinite stamina, and skipping chapters entirely. Celeste is intended to be a challenging and rewarding experience.
So it could be that the children are both ok and broken in new ways, like our generation was.