One of the highest stresses on passives and power components occurs when there is an inrush of current (di/dt) or a voltage spike (dv/dt), which can occur on po

One of the highest stresses on passives and power components occurs when there is an inrush of current (di/dt) or a voltage spike (dv/dt), which can occur on power cycling or plug in. So it is not a myth that hard reboots can be stressful on older hardware, but there is a certain amount of red herring because power cycling is also when an aged or diseased component is likely to show failure due to hours of service. Modern devices and standards are able, at a low cost, to implement ripple, transient, reverse voltage, inrush limiting and the like. So failures are more isolated. Nowadays, with stuff like USB there is inrush limiting, reverse voltage protection, transient suppression and it costs very little to implement, so it's mostly going to be power supplies.