I tried to repurpose an old laptop I had lying around as a "lie on the couch and surf the web or watch youtube" machine. It was one of the last 32-bit only cpus (pentium m), so I installed Debian bookworm (12) on it. Unfortunately it turned out it couldn't even play youtube videos at 144p without stuttering. So I E-wasted the machine.

I suppose as some kind of headless home server it could still have been useful. OTOH for something that runs 24/7 a RPi would use a fraction of the electricity and still be a lot more powerful.

So yes, beyond nostalgia and some embedded/industrial usecases, it's hard to see a use for a 32-bit only PC these days.