And by extension, the standard typewritten document was expected to be at 10CPI/12-point, especially for such as court filings or bills ; this was translated into word processing as a requirement for 12-point text - 12 point Courier looks like 10CPI typed text - and it became “the” standard adopted by the first generations of office software.
Nearly everyone at work has switched to Georgia 12pt. Great font and looks great printing from a laser printer. Sometimes I’ll switch to 11pt if a memo is running past one page. We try to keep memos short and on 1 page. People are more likely to read them. 
You don’t even have to be older; I often zoom websites and I’m not even 30. (Part of that is zooming OUT because they make the images too darn large)
That doesn’t really make sense, since Word uses a magnification feature. The font on the screen is not actually 11 point. On my screen, it matches up with Firefox’s 16 point.
It could be worse. The standard ACM conference proceeding, these days, is printed in 9 point type! Try reviewing a stack of 15 of those. It only takes an hour or two to go crosseyed.
At 74 years I deplore the switch to smaller fonts. I just measured the baseline skip of Scientific American and it is 11pt, which implies the font size is at most 9.5, maybe only 9. By contrast, the New Yorker has exactly 6 lines per inch, meaning likely a 10pt font. It is amazing how much more readable it is. I may drop SciAm because it is so hard to read. After subscribing for 45 years.
The online journal I do the technical editing for is strictly 12pt (with 14.4 baseline skips) but we have no space restrictions. Electrons are cheap. Of course, this matters only when you print them out, but then the results are nirvana.
You might contact them and see if the magazines and see if they have a large print version. Alternatively, electronic versions are zoomable, but require some sort of electronic device.
Thta’s my point. Because screens are bigger - and because more and more people do their reading onscreen - the font doesn’t have to be as big to be readable.
Pica, ten characters per horizontal inch, is still the industry standard for screenplays. For screenwriting format programs and other word processing uses, this means Courier, size 12.
http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2005/11/a-format-to-end.html
I don’t really see what the problem is.