To varying degrees they actually are. The hypervisor provides simulated devices and the kernel inside has device drivers to speak to them. For efficiency these devices are as "thin" as possible, but they are still simulated devices.
Unless you're using something like PCIe passthrough to give raw hardware access to a VM.
Its an unecessary complication when explaining containers to the uninitiated. Just tell them they are essentially VMs and they'll follow along with the other concepts just fine instead of looking at you wide eyed as they try decipher how "contained processes with contained storage" interacts with their use case. Once they get experience, they'll learn the details.
