I grew up with 3 brothers, so over the years there were a lot of bicycles in the household. I think the Raleigh I bought when I was 15 or so was the first one any of us had that was purchased new. Everything else came through garage sales and kid to kid transactions. But every family had multiple kids it seemed, so there were a lot of used bikes available. I'm not sure that market exists in the same way.
We did occasionally break wheels or frames going over jumps or crashing into something, but by and large the bikes were pretty sturdy and took a lot of abuse.