Directors who were given video cams or otherwise started young

*prompted by the Spielberg thread which got me to looking at bios on different directors*

If the stories can be believed, Speilberg, Jackson and Burton all were given or used 8mm cameras as pretty young children. I'm sure there are more that are not coming to mind now. Tarrintino I think spent a lot of time working in a video store as a fairly young guy. And I know I've heard about directors (or maybe actors) who were like ushers in old time movie theaters but the names don't come to mind.

I'm wondering about the cause and effect relationship here:

Is it that young people pick up technical things so much faster so they had an advantage technologically? (anyone old enough to have had to ask kids' help with things like computers, VCR, etc. can attest).

Is it that they someone displayed the love for cinema so much that the adults in their lives were prompted to put a movie cam in their hands?

Is it just the law of averages?

Is it just that those kinds of stories make good reading so they're kind of exaggerated?

For some reason, I don't think I've heard many similar stories about the wave of video recorders/compact video recorders that came out a decade or two ago. Seems like some kids from that era should be getting to the age to make a splash.