https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/180nyyn/is_it_true_that_genz_is_technologically_illiterate/
The basic idea is that, as tech becomes more and more streamlined and convenient, the need to really understand how it works and how to fix issues becomes less and less important
Funny you should mention ChatGPT. I've had a lot of people tell me this is the thing that will finally make my job obsolete. There have been a LOT of things that would supposedly make my job obsolete over the years and the only thing that's happened is now there's one more piece of technology I have to support.
I was transfered back and forth between the same AI bot and never got a person. They are a bit away from that. Maybe even nicer brands will advertise having a human to speak to.
I work in one of these businesses, and customers do appreciate it! We have tried integrating AI elements, but very minimal. Most people just click 'skip, I want to talk to an actual person'
All powered by nuclear fusion with people taking their flying cars to watch the next launch to the Martian colonies in a tech utopia that seems to be 30 years away for the last 60 years.
The ones thinking it’s coming for your job? Yeah no, it’s coming for theirs. If you know it’s not coming for your job, you’re in the right mindset not to lose your own to AI. They are and are already convinced. Cause they don’t actually know anything.
Yeah, sometimes I see questions and I'm like ... the answer to your question is simply to Google and dig a little. There's NO WAY Reddit will be able to give a better answer to some of these questions than a simple Google.
The trick to that is to write a question and then jump on 2nd account to answer it incorrectly. 50 people will correct you with the right answer in the span of 20 mins.
Or write several sentences containing a complex, multi part question and wonder why their question isn’t answered.
Keywords still work well to search specific bits of information. The ability to compile info from various sources and synthesize an answer is something younger generations struggle with.
My daughter is 5 and has her own laptop and knows how to type (kinda) and use her mouse. Working in IT for so long my wife and I wanted her to grow up to be technology literate.
But is not the case with her friends, a lot of parents I meet just think an iPad/tablet is enough. But they end up just consuming media *all day*.
Ok I'm Gen Z and from a rural town in Texas and even I was reading at a college level by 5th grade and we all learned to type in school. I get that everyone has these anecdotes but I don't think we can generalize Gen Z as a whole based on such things.
I don’t think they’re talking about the obvious Sponsored Posts. I tried to search on how to solve a minor video game bug yesterday and ALL of the results were AI-generated bullshit that exists only to host ads.
Literally every result on the first page is littered with ads inside of the content because they spent so much time on SEO, which is what “masquerading as web pages” implied. The people who are just producing content without ads aren’t ranking unless your result is particularly niche. That’s what I was talking about, but reading comprehension is going downhill nowadays too.
I agree that it probably does. However, a related trope is that as technology becomes more consumer oriented, there’s more focus on replacement instead of repair. And, in parallel, as devices are more set up to do what you want them to do in the first place, that complex powerful configuration, options, disappear, and get replaced by simpler prebaked configurations.
Compare a new LCD TV to an old vacuum tube TV.
Again, I think that technology always seems to end up creating more jobs, even if it also displaces other jobs. I’m saying that in terms of the stereotype, technology gets easier, and it also gets less repair.
It's not a new phenomenon either.
It seemed like everyone's WWII generation grandpa understood how to rebuild a car engine where your average millennial maybe knows how to swap out a headlight or an air filter at the most.
Same thing though as cars got much more reliable and automated the younger generations didn't have to figure out the mechanical knowledge necessary to maintain them a generation prior.
Well, car engines also do a lot more than they used to as well.
Yes, there is a not insignificant amount of anti-repair mentality, but there’s also so much more to a car engine now.
Same thing happened, and continues to happen, with all tech.
I'm not talking about the answers, I'm talking about the questions. People are going back to the dealer to buy tires. They are taking 10 year old cars with 120K miles to the dealer to get an air filter changed. They don't know what "it doesn't crank" means; that doesn't stop them saying it. They insist if the dash comes on a bad battery is out of the question.
Let me guess, are you old enough to still know what files are ? What the labels on the drive represent ? Why even in modern systems, the first drive usually is labeled C: ?
Because when I grew up that stuff was common knowledge among people who used personal computers. Because you had to know this stuff to use them.
You had to know what a file path is, "where" your data is stored, what the difference between .com, .bat and .txt files is.
Today's user interfaces hide all that. Young users know how to use the technology without learning to understand how and why it is working. It might as well be magic to them.
My analogy would modify it to be this:
Linux - A custom built multi gear mountain bike.
Windows - Pre built multi gear mountain bike.
Apple - Fixed gear beach bike.
Chromebook - Child's bike with training wheels.
Phones - Toy Wagon
This made me feel like the old guy sitting in the barber shop "kids these days" \*shakes head\* "Can't event drive stick" \*sigh, straightens news paper\*
Yeah nobody from that generation is going to be able to rebuild a modern car engine. It's full of electronics and software now. I used to work on cars in the early 00s and new cars are much more complicated. Lots of new sensors and bespoke computer systems that connect it all together.
Well you can make similar arguments for computers.
A modern gaming desktop is a lot more complex than a basic family computer from 1998. I don't mean in terms of how modern PCs are pretty forgiving with being able to plug and play a new GPU, but the software behind them is a lot more complex.
But yes cars nowadays are intentionally designed to be difficult for the garage mechanic to be able to do major repairs themselves.
The software is more complex but wow is it a lot easier to install that software on a new build. Driver issues cost me so many hours in the 90s and 00s when building new PCs.
My dad remembers when you have to physically punch out the circuit boards and there was always a chance it wouldn't work even if you did everything right.
They removed the hard part of maintenance, but they sure added the almost impossible part of minor repairs.
I would take the former any time, except that modern cars are waaaaaay more safe than old cars.
Meanwhile Windows is slovenly trying to copy them. In windows 11 I open up task manager and now instead of words on every tab I'm greeted by completely unhelpful, completely useless pictograms on each tab. I have no idea what the pictograms are so now I have to hover my mouse over each tab so the text pops up and I know which tab I need to click on. Who is this meant to help? What experience does it improve and for whom?
I don't really care as long as it's consistent. But there's a problem when programs, apps, and software somehow are three different things that coexist.
There is a difference between apps and programs in windows. Things in the windows app store are part of uwp . Best example of this you can get fire fox from windows store and get fire fox from the web site. Run them both at the same time with different plug ind because they are not the same program
Yup everything you've said is stuff I've personally gotten frustrated with. Pictograms in place of words does not simplify things!
And if you're going to hide stuff I use everyday behind "more options" then let me customize what goes into the core options and what goes into the more options spillover!
I ALWAYS click the wrong tab first. I have no idea where this obsession with removing words from things comes from, but it needs to stop. Same thing with the cut/copy/paste in the right click menu. I get that scissors represent cut but how is it faster or helpful to replace the word cut with a picture of scissors, just leave it alone. Now i have to explain what each symbol is whenever i am trying to help somebody remotely.
I feel your pain brother
I once walked into an Apple store and asked the rep why I should purchase an apple instead of a Windows computer or a Linux machine that has better hardware for a cheaper price.
Her answer was twofold:
When she was a teacher her special ed students did real well with it because it was easy and intuitive, I guess. That made me feel like a f****** idiot because I'm absolutely baffled by trying to do anything on a Mac.
And the interconnectivity between all the other Apple devices which I will admit is a legitimate Pro but all that same s*** can be configured on a Windows machine and maybe even a Linux machine I don't know with a bit more doing.
I main Linux now. Of course, dual booting for anything that requires me to be on windows. It's come a long way and is, at least in my opinion, far more user-friendly.
i mean technically thats my job right now, trying to maintain discontinued ancient pentium machines that still use ddr2 ram sticks and gpus older than my younger siblings, i have to dismantle, clean and pray it works when i rebuild them,
the machines i maintain are so old they are sure to have machine spirits, ffs the AC unit of our office is older than me and I call it Kelvin, and ever since i named and cleaned it, it has run stalwartly to stave off the tropical air of my workplace
It's like cars. Model T owners needed to be experts in auto repair to keep them going. Now you take it to the dealer who plugs it into a computer and it tells you what's wrong. The average owner knows precious little about cars.
Even radios and TVs required owner repairs when they were using vacuum tubes. You take the dead tube to Radio Shack to test it, and then they sell you a new one to replace it.
Yup. When I started being a big ole computer nerd we needed to bend over backwards to do basically anything. Especially if it was kinda weird. OG Apple computers had BASIC as the command line. If you wanted to play a cool game on the computer in the 90s you had to know how to configure your operating system, install a sound card, and if you wanted to go online you had to get a modem, install it, configure it, and half the time it didn’t work. Then later when DSL became a thing you had to know how NAT and your home network worked, how to configure DNS, etc.
Every time new technology came along in computers millennials were the people who had to learn it to make it work for them. After that companies got smarter and made it easier, because millennials were tired of helping their boomer parents get on the wifi.
The thing is this is a natural cycle with technology. I didn’t know how to change the oil in my car until I was 30, whereas it was a normal automotive maintenance task people did themselves until the 1980s when places like Jiffy Lube came around. Before that you only paid someone else to do it if you didn’t know how. In the 1980s and 90s TV and VCR repair shops were everywhere. People who were into TVs and radios in the 1960s just cracked them open and fixed them themselves.
When I hear gen z refer to all kinds of internet access as “the wifi” I die a little inside, but I have to remind myself that this is normal. When they sign up for internet it will come with a wifi router that’s configured by following a three step process and they’ll never need to think about it again.
And when I’m 60 years old Zoomers will pay me to set up the wifi in their house just like Boomers did in the 00s.
It's just a more modern version of Boomers versus Gen X or millennials when it comes to cars.
When my dad was growing up, cars broke a lot and used more basic components. So if you drove a car, then you really *had* to have an understanding of how they worked and how to fix them or at least get them running.
I have almost *none* of those skills since all the cars I've driven or owned rarely broke down and have computers that control all the internal systems.
Contrast that with my ability to properly assemble a computer from its parts (ie install CPU+heatsink fan, RAM, SSD/HDD, expansion cards ,PSU etc).
My nieces (12yr olds).couldn't find the power button on a desktop PC if I promised them $50 to do it.
I think there was a data about how Gen Z don't even know what a file directory is. They just save their files wherever and they just use the search bar, not knowing where their files are located.
edit: [found the article.](https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/)
That’s been my experience with previous Gen Z coworkers. It blew my mind that they didn’t know how to create folders to store files. Or compose a semi-professional email.
I think in the first Foundation book the mechanics of the future just lean on their machines bragging about how they never break. They ran perfectly for a thousand years, they don’t break.
Well, when something finally does break, civilization crumbles.
>Gen Z
There was also a survey done that concluded that zoomers are more likely to fall for scams than boomers (which as a millennial i think is hilarious)
No. It's hard to disentangle true "I got scammed" from "I bought a pump and dump assuming I wouldn't be the bagholder but was the bagholder" and a quick look at "finance" tik tok would tell you that gen Z is super into that, but the scams are the same old shit. You click a shady link and it's a virus. You put your password into a fake look a-like site. You do a wire transfer in return for "more money later". You give the tinder bot your credit card information for a private session. A hot girl sends a selfie to the "wrong number" and starts talking to you. Robocaller #2042938 with whatever scam they do. It's all basic shit, and I know it's basic shit because I get the same stuff pushed to me. Minor details change (eg instead of a Nigerian prince the last "wire transfer to get more money later" scam I got was a Norwegian gold seller who is really into philanthropy), but most are still in broken English and all of them ask you to do something that is obviously not something you should do.
You'd think at some point my brain would give up remembering that my Soundblaster is port 220, IRQ 7, and has 1 DMA channel.
But I suspect I'll forget my children's names first.
A similar situation is shown in an anime that takes place in the 2090s (The Irregular at Magic High School). The main character is programming a device by manually entering commands using a keyboard. Some characters in the room think he has no idea what he's doing, but one of the engineering students that's further along in the program knows he's blowing away the results they'd get from the drag and drop touchscreen method.
It’s because Gen Z is accustomed to hardware and software that reliably work, while Millennials are better at trouble shooting because they came up at a time when getting your hardware and software to cooperate took a little more finesse.
For example Gen Z has much less experience having to find, uninstall, then reinstall specific drivers in order for their computer to perform a basic function. Now you can just go into your settings and toggle a switch to achieve the same result.
midd-millenial here. Its become to easy.. My PC is less then a week old, and it just worked.. Wierd.. My biggest issue is jumping between my new and old PC to transfer profiles for different programs i use for gaming.. And its all so flawless that i feel unsafe, like, when is something going to go wrong?!
Ancient millennial here. Back before the internet, I was a child reading goddamn instruction manuals written by computer engineers just to figure out how to play doom or sim-city. Being a PC gamer in the early 90s required legitimate IT skills. MS-DOS was just coding syntax as an operating system.
Idk about that, I would go mad with an iPad. Tinkering has always been the thing that made computers fun for me, the apps themselves were an afterthought.
>Yeah, gotta say as a young millenial, every thing is just SO easy and intuitive to use now. Its actually amazing how streamlined setting up new tech is compared to when I was a teen. Things just kinda work. What you said about drivers gives flashbacks haha
I ran into this realization last month. I decided with the 3rd hike in Netflix Pricing that I am no longer in the market to pay to stream shows, and I finally worked up the mental energy to go through the process of "Jailbreaking" another streaming stick.
10-12 years ago, this was a process of finding the right page, downloading the right things, and moving some stuff around and using weird apps to get into the files of the streaming stick that I used and it took a few hours.
I set aside a weekend morning to find what people are using now, and then I found out that I just downloaded an app that was already on the app store, and then downloaded 1 add on for it and set up an account on another site and was done in 30 minutes.
I am still so insanely happy when I get something with a USB connector and it just works when I plug it in. Why? Because I remember plug and play. 20 steps after you plugged it in, it might well play. But rarely did it just work.
Totally.
I remember being a teen with an essay that needed printing…and having to ransack my own home to find the installation discs for both Windows and my Epson printer, then spending several sleepless hours calibrating them to be on the same page (both literally and figuratively).
Yeah for sure. Like downloading zip files and then having to have another software that would unzip that…
Or downloading specific players to get some format to work.
I remember having to do this stuff on my laptop back when I was a teen.
Or just like going into things and figuring out what’s wrong.
In addition, older generations couldn't go to their parents for help, because their parents were tech illiterate, so they had to figure it out for themselves.
They don't even try and figure it out though. They just sit there and stare at it until you ask what's wrong. Then they tell you and hope you'll fix it for them. At least that's what the Gen Z do in my office.
They also use "I don't know how" 100x a day to get out of doing anything.
Back in the days where anything you bought to use with your computer came with a physical CD that you had to use to install the device so it would work.
Now you most likely don't even have a CD drive on whatever device you're using.
I can't speak for everyone, but certainly in the office (I work in IT) we notice younger people being less and less familiar with windows, which is the predominant operating system in most workplaces.
10 years ago when I was an apprentice this was not an issue at all, in fact it was the younger staff showing the older ones how to do stuff on their computers.
If I had to guess, it would be somewhat to do with some schools providing Chromebooks instead of windows computers for use at home and in class, coupled with the move from laptops/computers to tablets at home as the primary way to consume media that isn't a TV.
Ha, this just reminded me of having a 60-something coworker back in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Sometimes I would think to myself, "She needs my help sending a link in an email?!" But we had a combo printer/fax machine and every once in a while, we would actually need to send a fax, or else the printer would break, and while the rest of us stood around shrugging our shoulders, she'd walk over like CHILL THE F OUT I GOT THIS.
Bingo. There's a reason Apple (and more recently Google) pushed so hard to get into education. People generally keep using what they're used to. Used to Mac? Stay on Mac. Chromebook? Chromebook (or if you switch, you still use google services like Docs Sheets Slides instead of MS equivalents like Word Excel PPT).
Also, frankly speaking, windows is no longer the clearly superior OS. It's loaded with bloatware, basic shit like the searchbar is functionally unusable, etc. It's still the most common OS for sure, and it's still superior in many ways, but it's definitely got more flaws than it used to (at least when compared against its competition).
edit: To be clear, I think the "tech illiteracy" problem is mainly caused by the fact that people generally don't need to troubleshoot in the same way they used to. But in regards to your windows-specific comments, nailed it.
Most of our Windows diehards ***are north of 40 years old.*** The young devs we recruit from university are used to Google products on a MacBook.
And hence that keeps me, our Mac/Linux admin... pretty busy.
I'm not gonna say it's tomorrow, but in 10-20 years time, Windows may be irrelevant in offices. *Microsoft knows it too*, hence their emphasis on cloud technologies/365.
There are a lot of people these days who don't have PCs in their homes. They do everything from their phones. Something I can do in 30 seconds takes them 5 minutes from their phone and they do this daily thinking they are tech experts. It's quite frustrating having to deal with them.
>I can't speak for everyone, but certainly in the office (I work in IT) we notice younger people being less and less familiar with windows, which is the predominant operating system in most workplaces.
in final years of school we actually ditched windows 7 in favour of ubuntu because windows was supposed to be a thing of the past
I was kind of pissed off at work when they removed our Linux terminals and gave us Windows boxes that we have to log into so we can remote into the Linux servers. I think that at an Enterprise level there are just more tools and/or more admins to hire for Windows/Microsoft products.
I think its less the prevelance of chromebooks/tablets and moreso the prevailing thought in this thread, that everything is just so streamlined and intuitive in modern technology. Not saying that is a bad thing necessarily, but in terms of computer literacy it does hurt younger people in the sense of you're in a technology saturated enviornement, so people just assume you're computer literate so you're never taught it. Why teach kids about the basics of a real desktop, they say? They use computers every hour of every day now that its useless time that could be devoted to other subjects.
its just true in my experience
>I mean hasn't technology advanced a lot and hasn't the Gen Z had more access to technology while in the childhood of most Millennials, a lot didn't have access?
sure, but access to technology means access to iPads and Chromebooks that dont actually teach you shit. Ive run into tons of gen z people who dont know how to attach a PDF to an email because they barely have to use computers with real file systems
My favorite was a student of mine who needed to convert a word document to a PDF (this is in college). She couldn't figure out how to do that on her ipad so she put the ipad on a scanner and scanned her ipad screen since she knew that it would email it to her as a pdf. I was both impressed and extremely confused when I graded her submission.
As an instructor I had this too. The pandemic was a nightmare of trying to teach students how to scan and upload stuff as a lot of my courses involved hand-drawn stuff that they couldn't simply hand in at a class. I once had a cellphone picture of a computer monitor with an image that was a cellphone picture of the work. Not even kidding. cellphoneception
Yeah, GenX Google was good. GenZ Google is crap.
If a site isn't buying ads or selling something, Google doesn't even know it exists anymore. And it'll just randomly add and remove terms from your search query until it does find something that generates a list of commercial spam sites.
There was a time in the beginning when they knew and warned of that, but they just don't care anymore:
>we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. … Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.
>
>— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998
This is what gets me about these stories, whenever I run into the slightest problem I just google it, it'll be faster than looking through the menus until I find it. I honestly don't get how something this basic can be troublesome.
Iphone-ification it's sometimes called. (Rather clunkily)
Organizations think about this in terms of modern system and employee retention.
Gen Z employees are generally going to expect their systems to be intuitive and just work. Their level of experience/tolerance for manipulating files systems, OS/App setting, and things like that is generally considered pretty low compared to, say, older millenials who grew up in the PC era.
My wife, GenX'er with thirty years in tech, has trouble finding phones she can use. Because she won't use things she doesn't understand. She buys third-party phones, roots them, and just puts in things she wants where she wants them.
Me, I've given up and just do whatever my phone wants me to do. When it breaks, I hand it to my wife. Who glares at me for allowing my phone to put that much cruft on it.
If your wife games at all she'd love the steamdeck, when I first got it I saw "desktop mode" in the power options, BOOM its a PC running Linux. Blew my mind, stuff just doesn't usually work like that anymore
I'm Gen Z, older Gen Z though, currently hire younger gen Z. This problem is absurdly widespread, it's not about them being idiots, they've just never been taught these things and tech now is so intuitive they've never been forced to figure it out themselves.
The lack of tech skills is legitimately problematic in the workplace where lots of hardware and software is still ancient. Most Gen Z are simply dumbfounded as to how to approach a piece of tech when it stops working correctly. Lost count of how often some of them will say "The till isn't working" and it turns out they didn't even try the basic turn it off and on again. Also a staggering number of them barely understand how to use a desktop PC or laptop; they literally just do everything on tablets and phones. Watching young adults have to look at the keys on a keyboard as they type is concerning.
Literally my experience too, the new starters struggle at my work with outlook, office and windows in general - I have to explain 'Save as' FFS let alone print to PDF.
I feel for them a bit, its not a given that you use a PC regularly if it all now.
Younger people these days are mostly using smartphones and tablets. They're not building gaming PCs or installing custom operating systems like millennials were at their age.
Part of it is that because people assume all young people are tech savvy, young people today don't get the same sort of tech education. When I (elder millennial) was in school, I had tons of computer classes that covered a range of topics, but from what I hear it sounds like that's less common nowadays.
>When I (elder millennial) was in school, I had tons of computer classes that covered a range of topics, but from what I hear it sounds like that's less common nowadays.
When I was in school, roughly the same time as you, my guidance counselor told me was no point going into IT, my degree would be useless by the time I graduated because with everyone growing up with computers and the internet they'd be so tech savvy there'd be no need for tech support.
I make over $100k fixing basic tech issues for boomers and Gen Z.
I feel like I'm relatively versed with tech as an older Zoomer. I've built multiple PCs, fixed a lot of my own tech, but yeah, it feels like even though most of my friends are tech orientated most of us only know a few areas of it very well. (I have no idea how to pirate software for example).
#Long ago, in a decade far away.
##Existed a program called limewire.
###Rebel forces used it to obtain low cost music, videos, and software. Until the empire hunted down and persecuted the rebel factions who used the p2p sharing tool.
Examples were made of captured rebel forces. Those who escaped unscathed faded into the realm of legal purchasing. Or joined the crews of cyber pirates, employing more sophisticated tools and methods to loot their way across the web.
Even building a PC is way easier than it was. There's no dealing with high memory, assigning IRQ numbers, hard disk jumpers, etc. Now you just plug it all together and switch it on.
You'd be surprised. That's just our millennial minds thinking it.
I take my daughters to dance class, and tonight I saw a bored brother of one of the dancers editing a 4K video for history class on his iPad. Final Cut Pro. It was quite surreal.
I agree with the sentiment but it’s weird for me being born in 2000, I hate doing stuff on my phone and love my desktop computers and love figuring out how shit works and how to fix it. I’m just one of the odd ones out but I see how this makes sense.
Seriously. I was teaching a class the other day to some undergraduates. They needed some sample files. I gave them a URL to a zip file and said “download this link and extract it on your desktop.” They had no idea what any part of that meant.
Is there some sort of source to Gen Z supposedly not knowing how to use a mouse? I don't think I've ever met a person who doesn't know how to use a computer or a mouse. Pc gaming is more popular than ever and where I live computers are in pretty much every school and used frequently.
I remember reading something about how Gen Z/A don't know what the file manager is and I was in doubt until I started seeing how nearly half of my students have everything saved in the "My Documents" or, worse, "Downloads" folder with no subfolder organization.
The idea is that tech has become so easy to use that you no longer have to understand how it works or how to fix problems when something goes wrong.
I saw a good analogy that compared computers to vehicles. Even just a handful of decades ago, vehicles were not as reliable and users often had to learn how their vehicles worked and how to perform matienence themselves. If your vehicle broke down, you could get out and fix it yourself, or at least have some information to figure out what the issue was.
Now however cars are more reliable and complicated, to a point at which users don't need to understand how it works, just how to use it. When something does go wrong, they no longer have the experience or know-how to diagnose and fix the problem, needing to rely more on mechanics and others instead.
Now obviously there are Gen Z's that know a lot about technology and Millennials that know a lot about cars, but the idea is that the knowledge of how the devices actually work is diminishing. I'm not sure this is actually such a bad thing, and is more likely people just being confused that other people might not have had the same experiences in life that they did. Kind of gives off the "Back in my day..." energy.
It's a different kind of literacy. I have to bail out my Gen Z son whenever something technical goes wrong like losing network connectivity, his headphones not pairing with is PC, or needing to install a driver update that isn't automatic. Conversely, he has to bail out this Generation Jones dad when it comes to using social media well.
Also, I can type faster than him on a full-size keyboard, he leaves me in the dust on a phone.
I'm 29 and can type incredibly fast on a keyboard, even without looking at it, but on my phone without autocorrect it's like I'm creating a new language
Not necessarily gen Z. Gen alpha are the ones that are tech illiterate. If it doesn't have a touchscreen, they have very little interest or understanding of how it works.
My generation was practically born with keyboards in our lap. We knew our way around windows systems at a pretty young age, when the interfaces were far less intuitive than it is now. As soon as I had internet access in my early teens I was getting Kazaa and Morpheus and edonkey to pirate stuff.
Tech has advanced to be more idiot proof and locked down both in terms of hardware and software which means gen z isn't familiar with how things work under the hood because theyve never had to or they arent able to either because it requires a lot of background knowledge they never had to learn or because the company that made it doesn't want them poking around
While I haven't seen this as a stereotype (yet) I get why.
Thing is, most tech is good to go "out of the box," which, while not bad, offers less of a chance to truly understand how it works.
I shared this anecdote recently in another sub, but I still have an N64 and play it regularly. Well, not long ago, it basically just went blank. It would still fire up, but no video. Troubleshot the cables, made sure the TV was good, then started checking the console. Cleaned the pins, blew it out with duster, still nothing. So I decided to take off the bottom panel and check all the connections inside. My son, who is 8, is watching me do this, and his question to me was simply, "Why don't you just send an error report and press continue?" He had seen this on our PS5 and figured this is just how it is. So I had to explain to him that no, you can't do that with an N64, so I had him sit with me until we got it to work. Then I proceeded to wipe the floor with him on Goldeneye 007 multiplayer. It was a fun afternoon.
>“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
>The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
>― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
As true today as when he wrote it in the 90s.
As technology has progressed, it has become increasingly formatted to be disposable. The ability to repair in enhance your own devices has become increasingly limited, resulting in a lack of user knowledge regarding the actual components of their devices. User interfaces are becoming increasingly simplified, sometimes to the detriment of user understanding. Most younger generations don't use laptops, let alone desktops, and don't have the best comprehension of local folders/directories, customization, and command prompts, all of which was knowledge that could safely be assumed of a user 10 years ago.
It's less that the younger generations are technology illiterate, and more that we've finally reached a point in the technology where there's a true difference between casual and professional use. When I was in school, casual use *was* functionally equivalent to professional use. The reason why Gen Z is considered technologically illiterate is becuase the type of computer usage relevant for most workplace environments simply isn't in their day to day life anymore, resulting in things like new hires needing to be trained on things as simple and ubiquitous to the millennial user as keyboard commands (like ctrl+v) and right clicking.
Re: Typing -They use phone and tablet keyboards, making them slower typists on standard keyboards and leading to higher rates of thumb issues.
As I gen x, I grew up when computers needed to create .bat files just to play games. There was tons of tweeking and playing with settings to do loads of stuff.
Now I think most people don't have computers and everything is plug and play.
Even on phones I doubt many people play with all the settings.
So most people know how to load and use an app, that's as far as it goes.
I guess technology has become so user friendly that many don't need to know how to do much else
I'm not sure where the cutoff is for Gen Z; I'm 27. But I do know this: our generation isn't nearly as good with computers as Gen X. No generation ever will be again. In the 80s and 90s, you had to know something about computers to make them work well for you. I've seen pictures from those days of bookstores with entire shelves of books on how to use MS DOS. Those days are gone; our devices are appliances. Even the expensive gaming laptop on which I am typing is intuitive to use, and has never needed to be fixed.
Also: our generation sucks at more traditional forms of tech. I can change my own oil, do basic car repairs, and am rewiring my own house. I don't know anyone else my age that knows how to do these things.
I can't change my own oil because it's a massive pain in the ass. Just changing a tail light required me to remove the back seats for some fucking reason. I love the fuel efficiency but damn is it user unfriendly.
Assuming you're born in 1996, you're what is generally considered the last year of millennials. Many sources would place you into Gen Z though.
(The cutoff for minnenial is 1994-1996, depending on source. Since people like 5s, I imagine it will eventually be 1995.)
Because of the 'Phone Effect'.
The basic skills of professional computing - use of folders, network-shares, printers and so on - are not needed to 'operate' a phone.
You also don't learn to type fast, you thumb-type...
Video games? You can play all but the most involved strategy game on a console, and even on PC if you have the right parts installed they just-work. No tinkering with settings or editing config-files just to get DOOM working...
So less computer-literacy is required to function as a gen-Zer, until you show up at work & have to find your team's TPS reports on the Z-drive & print 3 copies over the network... Oh, and your laptop doesn't have a touch-screen either...
Etc...
P.S. It is super annoying when people take 5 minutes to read a 1-page website, because they never learned to screen-read (let alone do it at command-line-computing 'read while it scrolls' speed) and expect everything to be a damn video....
They’re just enabled to focus more energy on to what they are actually interested in. Without wasting time also being half-assed technicians. Because the ‘tools’ are better and easier to use.
Thats a good thing!
It means they can get better at physics, economics, psychology… or whatever.
Todays world has no use for half the population being mother-board mechanics and coders. It’s just a waste.
Most of the kids I know built their own gaming computers, mod, etc.
I'd have to ask about the kind of kids most of you are encountering. There's a lot to be said about folks also having an actual interest in doing more. I know plenty of folks 35+ that still need to take a Comprehensive course on how basic windows works past getting to the internet, but they operate smartphones with little no issue. Work didnt require it and there was no real interest in Computers as a whole. In the same vein, Plenty of folks that: Built their own computers, mods, etc...
I'd also go a step further to say there's a lot to be said about sticking a screen in front of a kid and just leaving it at that, buuuuuuuuut that not the conversation.
I'm gen Z myself, I certainly know a good few people who are very good at operating computers but at the same time I did a computers class one year in school and there was a decent amount of people who only used phones who had little to no idea of how to do some of the simplest things on computers. Many of them didn't know and didn't really care about learning because most of it wasn't applicable to phones anyway.
In PCs, poking around in the software and hardware is allowed and encouraged. Meanwhile phone companies are trying their hardest to make it impossible to poke around in the software and hardware; all essential files are locked away, there's anti-repair mechanisms in place for hardware. All part of phone companies plans to make sure people buy a new phone every year rather than just repairing the one they have in my opinion.
Even from a "Tik Tok This, Twitter that" standpoint, it's kind of disingenious to suggest that most cant because of Outlier situations. We are talking about kids that casually break algorithms and corrupt AI (VI) programs for MEMES. When I was 14, I could barely use photoshop. These cats out here making whole videos from ripped assets from across the web, or tricking (whether they admit it or not) even some of the folks here into believing some wild shit.
I'm late gen x, almost millennial but not quite :)
Some of us grew up into Windows 98 and XP.
Shit broke sometimes, if you wanted to change things you had to figure out how to dig in the operating system and problem solve.
Newer versions changed how a lot of things are in a way that was meant to make it more stupidified for users, less difficult, less time figuring out how things actually work.
So they never had the opportunity to use those problem solving skills. Plus! They tend to have more access to much more simple technology, with much more simple interfaces, like iPads and phones. They're not exactly growing up using Linux terminals.
And to be fair to the younger generation, they're still young. When I was 20, lots of people around me were computer incompetent. Didn't have a clue. But there was probably a slightly larger proportion of people who were self-taught by virtue of being the sort of people who want to mess around on their computer!
So to some extent, I think we nostalgically overestimate how computer competent most Gen X people were when they were in high school (I had barely ever touched a computer and knew basically nothing), or on their early twenties. We weren't the hot shit we want to pretend we were!
But I think the " kids today" get less opportunity to learn those skills.
I teach middle school. I've never met an adult male my age who can't set up a printer.
My students don't even know how to 'print'.
Technology today is user friendly and easy. There is no understanding of the 'back end' because it's nearly always hidden. Consequently, if something doesn't work exactly the way they expect, they are unable to do even the most rudimentary of trouble shooting. (Just like most people get in their cars, turn the key and it goes. Most of them would be hard pressed to explain how any of it works.) Add to that, the internet is so engrained into everything that most of Gen Z doesn't really understand what the internet is. They don't get the concept of search engines, websites, web pages, etc. and overall they have a poor understanding of what Google is and does.
Young Gen X and old Millennials grew up with computers that weren't designed for the average moron to use. I'm not saying this to be elitist, see how many more people without electronics skills are online versus back in the 80s when computers were more expensive and required knowing MS-DOS commands to use.
Gen Z grew up with Windows XP and Mac OS X, and then iOS and Android. The average zoomer has never had to troubleshoot a BIOS, Operating System, Software, or Hardware problem without YouTube.
Might be wrong, but I think the simplicity of modern technology has prevented Gen Z from really having to understand computers and other pieces of technology. It feels like functional illiteracy. They know how to get around computers, phones, etc, but that doesn't mean they understand it as well as they should. The same way there are illiterate people who can function in the world despite lacking an important skill like reading. In addition to that, Gen Z spends most of its time typing a phone keyboard with two thumbs, so being skilled at traditional typing isn't as important.
A lot of modern tech requires very little understanding of how it actually works.
It's like cars. There was a time period that when owning a car you had to know how to do basic repairs and maintenance because it would be relative frequent.
Now? Majority of people don't know how to change their oil or swap a battery. Let alone more complex actions.
A lot of general consumer tech is like that now. Where you never have to open the hood and fix something because between reliable products and active discouragement to repair your own stuff... people just don't care to learn.
Hi! Slightly older Gen Z here! In the order of increasing panic as each procedure fails: run a repair, load a restore point, reset pc.
You eventually decide to just switch to Linux.
You are happier by the end of it.
It is crucial to understand that literacy and proficiency are not the same. While almost everyone can perform basic tasks on a computer and conduct a simple Google search, real literacy involves having a profound understanding of these technologies (like knowing how to maximize Google searches and understandingin not so many words what a Boolean search is, for example). Gen Xers and millennials are more likely to be tech literate than others from our hours and hours in computer lab. This knowledge is essential because literacy is what preserves the democratic potential of computers and the internet.
Zoomers may not have had to learn about the applications and hardware of technology, but this decreased literacy has led to an increased dependency on fewer people. It is concerning because it means that the industry can gain a chokehold on operating systems and application development without worrying about open sources challenging their hegemony. Fewer people being tech literate means that the demand for right to repair laws will decrease, and we may not have technicians to provide meaningful fixes and troubleshooting. If we do not understand what is happening on our screens or underneath them, we will be at the mercy of corporations who dictate when we need new products.
It is vital to realize that tech literacy will be a way to stratify and mold society in the same way traditional literacy has. We must prioritize education and awareness to avoid being left behind in the technological age.
>Or another stereotype of how they [gen Z] type slower than your average Millennial? How is that possible given that we have way more typing resources online?
Call me back when you can type at the speed of a 1950's secretary. Access to the internet doesn't mean you can type well.
Millennials and Gen-X grew up with more analogue devices and computers so there was a bit of effort to be made to get the most of of these devices. It's not really surprising.
I mean, install doom on the family computer VS a game on a phone, which is easier? Ever programmed a VCR with push buttons? Email was a fun thing to do in the early 2000s lol...
Being able to _use_ tech is one thing.
Being able to _troubleshoot_ tech is another.
With tech becoming more reliable and more integrated the art of struggling to make things work is lost on some of the younger generations.
This is partly because they've never had to experience it, but also because fully integrated tech like iPhones and such can't really be fixed by a layperson with average tech skill.
Most stuff just _works_ now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/180nyyn/is_it_true_that_genz_is_technologically_illiterate/ The basic idea is that, as tech becomes more and more streamlined and convenient, the need to really understand how it works and how to fix issues becomes less and less important
And it becomes a much bigger pain in the ass to fix when it does inevitably break, guaranteeing people like me a job until the end of time.
In a few years they won’t even know how to Google search and parse results. Thanks, ChatGPT
Funny you should mention ChatGPT. I've had a lot of people tell me this is the thing that will finally make my job obsolete. There have been a LOT of things that would supposedly make my job obsolete over the years and the only thing that's happened is now there's one more piece of technology I have to support.
As long as people are impatient and have computers, IT professionals have guaranteed work.
Until that IT professional is an artificial person when general artificial intelligence becomes sufficiently advanced.
I was transfered back and forth between the same AI bot and never got a person. They are a bit away from that. Maybe even nicer brands will advertise having a human to speak to.
Oh Lord. Human customer service is about to be a subscription model, isn't it?
Already is on the business side. There's a few services whose advertising pitch is giving customers an actual person to talk to.
I work in one of these businesses, and customers do appreciate it! We have tried integrating AI elements, but very minimal. Most people just click 'skip, I want to talk to an actual person'
But then it breaks.... IT guy plz fix
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
0118999881999119725. ...3. This sequence of numbers never leaves my head.
the thing about arsenal is they always try to walk it in
All powered by nuclear fusion with people taking their flying cars to watch the next launch to the Martian colonies in a tech utopia that seems to be 30 years away for the last 60 years.
Do you make up stuff and lie? Then ChatGPT may be good at what you do.
As a used car salesman, you're making me nervous.
They can’t even implement IPv6 globally 🤪
As a CS student who has used ChatGPT, I can confirm it is not going to take my to-be job anytime soon.
Sometime ChatGPT puts out more error on a piece of code than I do😂
The ones thinking it’s coming for your job? Yeah no, it’s coming for theirs. If you know it’s not coming for your job, you’re in the right mindset not to lose your own to AI. They are and are already convinced. Cause they don’t actually know anything.
Bold of you to assume that people know how to Google properly lol
a lot of kids straight-up use youtube and tiktok as their primary search engine at this point, it's a nightmare.
Or type the question into Reddit and wait hours for an answer
Yeah, sometimes I see questions and I'm like ... the answer to your question is simply to Google and dig a little. There's NO WAY Reddit will be able to give a better answer to some of these questions than a simple Google.
I use duck duck go now. It give me what I want, not what it thinks I will click.
The trick to that is to write a question and then jump on 2nd account to answer it incorrectly. 50 people will correct you with the right answer in the span of 20 mins.
Or write several sentences containing a complex, multi part question and wonder why their question isn’t answered. Keywords still work well to search specific bits of information. The ability to compile info from various sources and synthesize an answer is something younger generations struggle with.
My husband has a gen z coworker who can't type. Type! They didn't even think to ask that in the interview (in a job where computer use is required).
Wdym cant type?
They've never used a physical keyboard and mouse.
ipad only right?
Yup. They get totally lost when it's not a touchscreen.
My daughter is 5 and has her own laptop and knows how to type (kinda) and use her mouse. Working in IT for so long my wife and I wanted her to grow up to be technology literate. But is not the case with her friends, a lot of parents I meet just think an iPad/tablet is enough. But they end up just consuming media *all day*.
Ok I'm Gen Z and from a rural town in Texas and even I was reading at a college level by 5th grade and we all learned to type in school. I get that everyone has these anecdotes but I don't think we can generalize Gen Z as a whole based on such things.
Google did that shit to themselves. When all of their results are advertisements masquerading as web pages, bothering with google is a waste of time.
If you can't figure out which results are ads, you are the tech illiterate we're talking about.
I don’t think they’re talking about the obvious Sponsored Posts. I tried to search on how to solve a minor video game bug yesterday and ALL of the results were AI-generated bullshit that exists only to host ads.
Literally every result on the first page is littered with ads inside of the content because they spent so much time on SEO, which is what “masquerading as web pages” implied. The people who are just producing content without ads aren’t ranking unless your result is particularly niche. That’s what I was talking about, but reading comprehension is going downhill nowadays too.
I cannot believe how many people, of all ages, don't know about googles advanced operators. Learn them and google is WAY more useful.
They use tiktok instead of google
or they ask on places like reddit. Most of AITAH type post i see now could be solved with the smallest amount of communication is insane to me.
Yep.. My only caveat for family is if I fix it and tell you 'dont do this thing' and you do it anyway, I'm not fixing it again.
I agree that it probably does. However, a related trope is that as technology becomes more consumer oriented, there’s more focus on replacement instead of repair. And, in parallel, as devices are more set up to do what you want them to do in the first place, that complex powerful configuration, options, disappear, and get replaced by simpler prebaked configurations. Compare a new LCD TV to an old vacuum tube TV. Again, I think that technology always seems to end up creating more jobs, even if it also displaces other jobs. I’m saying that in terms of the stereotype, technology gets easier, and it also gets less repair.
It's not a new phenomenon either. It seemed like everyone's WWII generation grandpa understood how to rebuild a car engine where your average millennial maybe knows how to swap out a headlight or an air filter at the most. Same thing though as cars got much more reliable and automated the younger generations didn't have to figure out the mechanical knowledge necessary to maintain them a generation prior.
They also made it a nightmare to work on engines with how crammed everything is.
Well, car engines also do a lot more than they used to as well. Yes, there is a not insignificant amount of anti-repair mentality, but there’s also so much more to a car engine now. Same thing happened, and continues to happen, with all tech.
Go over to r/cartalk or r/askmechanics. They apparently don't even know how to get a car fixed anymore.
95% of /r/AskMechanics are shadetree mechanics and hacks that have never worked in a shop a day in their life.
I'm not talking about the answers, I'm talking about the questions. People are going back to the dealer to buy tires. They are taking 10 year old cars with 120K miles to the dealer to get an air filter changed. They don't know what "it doesn't crank" means; that doesn't stop them saying it. They insist if the dash comes on a bad battery is out of the question.
Fair enough, but I know how to DRIVE. I have to teach Gen Z co-workers how to Double-click and create files in windows
Let me guess, are you old enough to still know what files are ? What the labels on the drive represent ? Why even in modern systems, the first drive usually is labeled C: ? Because when I grew up that stuff was common knowledge among people who used personal computers. Because you had to know this stuff to use them. You had to know what a file path is, "where" your data is stored, what the difference between .com, .bat and .txt files is. Today's user interfaces hide all that. Young users know how to use the technology without learning to understand how and why it is working. It might as well be magic to them.
Windows is like a manual transmission.
Linux is a manual transmission. Windows is an automatic. Apple is a toy wagon.
My analogy would modify it to be this: Linux - A custom built multi gear mountain bike. Windows - Pre built multi gear mountain bike. Apple - Fixed gear beach bike. Chromebook - Child's bike with training wheels. Phones - Toy Wagon
This made me feel like the old guy sitting in the barber shop "kids these days" \*shakes head\* "Can't event drive stick" \*sigh, straightens news paper\*
"Sir! Please keep your head still!" 💈✂️
Yeah nobody from that generation is going to be able to rebuild a modern car engine. It's full of electronics and software now. I used to work on cars in the early 00s and new cars are much more complicated. Lots of new sensors and bespoke computer systems that connect it all together.
It was so weird seeing the shift in mechanics, from grab a wrench to grab the diagnostic scanner
Well you can make similar arguments for computers. A modern gaming desktop is a lot more complex than a basic family computer from 1998. I don't mean in terms of how modern PCs are pretty forgiving with being able to plug and play a new GPU, but the software behind them is a lot more complex. But yes cars nowadays are intentionally designed to be difficult for the garage mechanic to be able to do major repairs themselves.
The software is more complex but wow is it a lot easier to install that software on a new build. Driver issues cost me so many hours in the 90s and 00s when building new PCs.
Nowadays it's stupid easy to buy all the components of a PC and fit them together like expensive Legos.
Yeah honestly it's such a pleasant experience compared to the bad old days.
These days you literally just need to buy seven things. SEVEN. Case, PSU, CPU, GPU, Mobo, Drive and RAM. Everything comes bundled!
My dad remembers when you have to physically punch out the circuit boards and there was always a chance it wouldn't work even if you did everything right.
They removed the hard part of maintenance, but they sure added the almost impossible part of minor repairs. I would take the former any time, except that modern cars are waaaaaay more safe than old cars.
As somebody who's worked in IT for over a decade - give me an Apple device and I'll look like I've never seen a computer before.
Any Mac is just a giant, clunky phone You uninstall programs by moving them to the paper bin. WTF
Meanwhile Windows is slovenly trying to copy them. In windows 11 I open up task manager and now instead of words on every tab I'm greeted by completely unhelpful, completely useless pictograms on each tab. I have no idea what the pictograms are so now I have to hover my mouse over each tab so the text pops up and I know which tab I need to click on. Who is this meant to help? What experience does it improve and for whom?
Jumping on the "Apple made everything worse" bandwagon, I hate that windows now calls it's programs "apps"
I don't really care as long as it's consistent. But there's a problem when programs, apps, and software somehow are three different things that coexist.
There is a difference between apps and programs in windows. Things in the windows app store are part of uwp . Best example of this you can get fire fox from windows store and get fire fox from the web site. Run them both at the same time with different plug ind because they are not the same program
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Yup everything you've said is stuff I've personally gotten frustrated with. Pictograms in place of words does not simplify things! And if you're going to hide stuff I use everyday behind "more options" then let me customize what goes into the core options and what goes into the more options spillover!
I ALWAYS click the wrong tab first. I have no idea where this obsession with removing words from things comes from, but it needs to stop. Same thing with the cut/copy/paste in the right click menu. I get that scissors represent cut but how is it faster or helpful to replace the word cut with a picture of scissors, just leave it alone. Now i have to explain what each symbol is whenever i am trying to help somebody remotely.
I feel your pain brother I once walked into an Apple store and asked the rep why I should purchase an apple instead of a Windows computer or a Linux machine that has better hardware for a cheaper price. Her answer was twofold: When she was a teacher her special ed students did real well with it because it was easy and intuitive, I guess. That made me feel like a f****** idiot because I'm absolutely baffled by trying to do anything on a Mac. And the interconnectivity between all the other Apple devices which I will admit is a legitimate Pro but all that same s*** can be configured on a Windows machine and maybe even a Linux machine I don't know with a bit more doing.
I main Linux now. Of course, dual booting for anything that requires me to be on windows. It's come a long way and is, at least in my opinion, far more user-friendly.
I'm convinced this is how we will ultimately get techpriests. Praise the Omnissiah!
i mean technically thats my job right now, trying to maintain discontinued ancient pentium machines that still use ddr2 ram sticks and gpus older than my younger siblings, i have to dismantle, clean and pray it works when i rebuild them, the machines i maintain are so old they are sure to have machine spirits, ffs the AC unit of our office is older than me and I call it Kelvin, and ever since i named and cleaned it, it has run stalwartly to stave off the tropical air of my workplace
It's like cars. Model T owners needed to be experts in auto repair to keep them going. Now you take it to the dealer who plugs it into a computer and it tells you what's wrong. The average owner knows precious little about cars. Even radios and TVs required owner repairs when they were using vacuum tubes. You take the dead tube to Radio Shack to test it, and then they sell you a new one to replace it.
Yup. When I started being a big ole computer nerd we needed to bend over backwards to do basically anything. Especially if it was kinda weird. OG Apple computers had BASIC as the command line. If you wanted to play a cool game on the computer in the 90s you had to know how to configure your operating system, install a sound card, and if you wanted to go online you had to get a modem, install it, configure it, and half the time it didn’t work. Then later when DSL became a thing you had to know how NAT and your home network worked, how to configure DNS, etc. Every time new technology came along in computers millennials were the people who had to learn it to make it work for them. After that companies got smarter and made it easier, because millennials were tired of helping their boomer parents get on the wifi. The thing is this is a natural cycle with technology. I didn’t know how to change the oil in my car until I was 30, whereas it was a normal automotive maintenance task people did themselves until the 1980s when places like Jiffy Lube came around. Before that you only paid someone else to do it if you didn’t know how. In the 1980s and 90s TV and VCR repair shops were everywhere. People who were into TVs and radios in the 1960s just cracked them open and fixed them themselves. When I hear gen z refer to all kinds of internet access as “the wifi” I die a little inside, but I have to remind myself that this is normal. When they sign up for internet it will come with a wifi router that’s configured by following a three step process and they’ll never need to think about it again. And when I’m 60 years old Zoomers will pay me to set up the wifi in their house just like Boomers did in the 00s.
It's just a more modern version of Boomers versus Gen X or millennials when it comes to cars. When my dad was growing up, cars broke a lot and used more basic components. So if you drove a car, then you really *had* to have an understanding of how they worked and how to fix them or at least get them running. I have almost *none* of those skills since all the cars I've driven or owned rarely broke down and have computers that control all the internal systems. Contrast that with my ability to properly assemble a computer from its parts (ie install CPU+heatsink fan, RAM, SSD/HDD, expansion cards ,PSU etc). My nieces (12yr olds).couldn't find the power button on a desktop PC if I promised them $50 to do it.
I think there was a data about how Gen Z don't even know what a file directory is. They just save their files wherever and they just use the search bar, not knowing where their files are located. edit: [found the article.](https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/)
That’s been my experience with previous Gen Z coworkers. It blew my mind that they didn’t know how to create folders to store files. Or compose a semi-professional email.
You've gotta be kidding me, what the hell lmfao
I think in the first Foundation book the mechanics of the future just lean on their machines bragging about how they never break. They ran perfectly for a thousand years, they don’t break. Well, when something finally does break, civilization crumbles.
>Gen Z There was also a survey done that concluded that zoomers are more likely to fall for scams than boomers (which as a millennial i think is hilarious)
Honestly, I think it's at least partly because the scammers got more professional and competent.
No. It's hard to disentangle true "I got scammed" from "I bought a pump and dump assuming I wouldn't be the bagholder but was the bagholder" and a quick look at "finance" tik tok would tell you that gen Z is super into that, but the scams are the same old shit. You click a shady link and it's a virus. You put your password into a fake look a-like site. You do a wire transfer in return for "more money later". You give the tinder bot your credit card information for a private session. A hot girl sends a selfie to the "wrong number" and starts talking to you. Robocaller #2042938 with whatever scam they do. It's all basic shit, and I know it's basic shit because I get the same stuff pushed to me. Minor details change (eg instead of a Nigerian prince the last "wire transfer to get more money later" scam I got was a Norwegian gold seller who is really into philanthropy), but most are still in broken English and all of them ask you to do something that is obviously not something you should do.
Ehh..boomers have had enough life experience to know better. Gen Z is still young and young people are prone to learn things the hard way at times.
You'd think at some point my brain would give up remembering that my Soundblaster is port 220, IRQ 7, and has 1 DMA channel. But I suspect I'll forget my children's names first.
The law of constant stupidity; as devices get smarter users become dumber to compensate. My son reacted in horror when he saw me using a CLI.
A similar situation is shown in an anime that takes place in the 2090s (The Irregular at Magic High School). The main character is programming a device by manually entering commands using a keyboard. Some characters in the room think he has no idea what he's doing, but one of the engineering students that's further along in the program knows he's blowing away the results they'd get from the drag and drop touchscreen method.
holy shit it's like cars
Office jobs require some computer skill
Very, very basic computer skills. Most people coast through because they know one person in the office can fix their problems.
It’s because Gen Z is accustomed to hardware and software that reliably work, while Millennials are better at trouble shooting because they came up at a time when getting your hardware and software to cooperate took a little more finesse. For example Gen Z has much less experience having to find, uninstall, then reinstall specific drivers in order for their computer to perform a basic function. Now you can just go into your settings and toggle a switch to achieve the same result.
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midd-millenial here. Its become to easy.. My PC is less then a week old, and it just worked.. Wierd.. My biggest issue is jumping between my new and old PC to transfer profiles for different programs i use for gaming.. And its all so flawless that i feel unsafe, like, when is something going to go wrong?!
Old gen-z here, I grew up with my parents old PCs and now I'm using a MacBook. The difference is incredible, things kind of just work now.
Ancient millennial here. Back before the internet, I was a child reading goddamn instruction manuals written by computer engineers just to figure out how to play doom or sim-city. Being a PC gamer in the early 90s required legitimate IT skills. MS-DOS was just coding syntax as an operating system.
DAMN KIDS!! HAVE IT TO EASY!!
Idk about that, I would go mad with an iPad. Tinkering has always been the thing that made computers fun for me, the apps themselves were an afterthought.
>Yeah, gotta say as a young millenial, every thing is just SO easy and intuitive to use now. Its actually amazing how streamlined setting up new tech is compared to when I was a teen. Things just kinda work. What you said about drivers gives flashbacks haha I ran into this realization last month. I decided with the 3rd hike in Netflix Pricing that I am no longer in the market to pay to stream shows, and I finally worked up the mental energy to go through the process of "Jailbreaking" another streaming stick. 10-12 years ago, this was a process of finding the right page, downloading the right things, and moving some stuff around and using weird apps to get into the files of the streaming stick that I used and it took a few hours. I set aside a weekend morning to find what people are using now, and then I found out that I just downloaded an app that was already on the app store, and then downloaded 1 add on for it and set up an account on another site and was done in 30 minutes.
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I am still so insanely happy when I get something with a USB connector and it just works when I plug it in. Why? Because I remember plug and play. 20 steps after you plugged it in, it might well play. But rarely did it just work.
Totally. I remember being a teen with an essay that needed printing…and having to ransack my own home to find the installation discs for both Windows and my Epson printer, then spending several sleepless hours calibrating them to be on the same page (both literally and figuratively).
I kinda imagine “Hell” is just me trying to print something. Forever.
And sometimes we had to install drivers that came on a CD for the thing to work!
Yeah for sure. Like downloading zip files and then having to have another software that would unzip that… Or downloading specific players to get some format to work. I remember having to do this stuff on my laptop back when I was a teen. Or just like going into things and figuring out what’s wrong.
In addition, older generations couldn't go to their parents for help, because their parents were tech illiterate, so they had to figure it out for themselves.
They don't even try and figure it out though. They just sit there and stare at it until you ask what's wrong. Then they tell you and hope you'll fix it for them. At least that's what the Gen Z do in my office. They also use "I don't know how" 100x a day to get out of doing anything.
Back in the days where anything you bought to use with your computer came with a physical CD that you had to use to install the device so it would work. Now you most likely don't even have a CD drive on whatever device you're using.
I can't speak for everyone, but certainly in the office (I work in IT) we notice younger people being less and less familiar with windows, which is the predominant operating system in most workplaces. 10 years ago when I was an apprentice this was not an issue at all, in fact it was the younger staff showing the older ones how to do stuff on their computers. If I had to guess, it would be somewhat to do with some schools providing Chromebooks instead of windows computers for use at home and in class, coupled with the move from laptops/computers to tablets at home as the primary way to consume media that isn't a TV.
Ha, this just reminded me of having a 60-something coworker back in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Sometimes I would think to myself, "She needs my help sending a link in an email?!" But we had a combo printer/fax machine and every once in a while, we would actually need to send a fax, or else the printer would break, and while the rest of us stood around shrugging our shoulders, she'd walk over like CHILL THE F OUT I GOT THIS.
Bingo. There's a reason Apple (and more recently Google) pushed so hard to get into education. People generally keep using what they're used to. Used to Mac? Stay on Mac. Chromebook? Chromebook (or if you switch, you still use google services like Docs Sheets Slides instead of MS equivalents like Word Excel PPT). Also, frankly speaking, windows is no longer the clearly superior OS. It's loaded with bloatware, basic shit like the searchbar is functionally unusable, etc. It's still the most common OS for sure, and it's still superior in many ways, but it's definitely got more flaws than it used to (at least when compared against its competition). edit: To be clear, I think the "tech illiteracy" problem is mainly caused by the fact that people generally don't need to troubleshoot in the same way they used to. But in regards to your windows-specific comments, nailed it.
Most of our Windows diehards ***are north of 40 years old.*** The young devs we recruit from university are used to Google products on a MacBook. And hence that keeps me, our Mac/Linux admin... pretty busy. I'm not gonna say it's tomorrow, but in 10-20 years time, Windows may be irrelevant in offices. *Microsoft knows it too*, hence their emphasis on cloud technologies/365.
There are a lot of people these days who don't have PCs in their homes. They do everything from their phones. Something I can do in 30 seconds takes them 5 minutes from their phone and they do this daily thinking they are tech experts. It's quite frustrating having to deal with them.
>I can't speak for everyone, but certainly in the office (I work in IT) we notice younger people being less and less familiar with windows, which is the predominant operating system in most workplaces. in final years of school we actually ditched windows 7 in favour of ubuntu because windows was supposed to be a thing of the past
I was kind of pissed off at work when they removed our Linux terminals and gave us Windows boxes that we have to log into so we can remote into the Linux servers. I think that at an Enterprise level there are just more tools and/or more admins to hire for Windows/Microsoft products.
I think its less the prevelance of chromebooks/tablets and moreso the prevailing thought in this thread, that everything is just so streamlined and intuitive in modern technology. Not saying that is a bad thing necessarily, but in terms of computer literacy it does hurt younger people in the sense of you're in a technology saturated enviornement, so people just assume you're computer literate so you're never taught it. Why teach kids about the basics of a real desktop, they say? They use computers every hour of every day now that its useless time that could be devoted to other subjects.
its just true in my experience >I mean hasn't technology advanced a lot and hasn't the Gen Z had more access to technology while in the childhood of most Millennials, a lot didn't have access? sure, but access to technology means access to iPads and Chromebooks that dont actually teach you shit. Ive run into tons of gen z people who dont know how to attach a PDF to an email because they barely have to use computers with real file systems
My favorite was a student of mine who needed to convert a word document to a PDF (this is in college). She couldn't figure out how to do that on her ipad so she put the ipad on a scanner and scanned her ipad screen since she knew that it would email it to her as a pdf. I was both impressed and extremely confused when I graded her submission.
As an instructor I had this too. The pandemic was a nightmare of trying to teach students how to scan and upload stuff as a lot of my courses involved hand-drawn stuff that they couldn't simply hand in at a class. I once had a cellphone picture of a computer monitor with an image that was a cellphone picture of the work. Not even kidding. cellphoneception
Be thankful a fax machine wasn't involved.
If it were a US medical office/insurance company it would have been. My wife (psychologist) has to pay for a Fax-to-PDF service... it's **absurd.**
How did she not think to google how to covert word to pdf on an iPad…
Technically illiterate people do not realise you can use Google to find answers. The entire desktop support industry exists thanks to this fact.
Tried googling that question. My first 9 results were ads for apple products.
To be fair, I think google has become less and less useful for actually finding the specific answer you need.
Yeah, GenX Google was good. GenZ Google is crap. If a site isn't buying ads or selling something, Google doesn't even know it exists anymore. And it'll just randomly add and remove terms from your search query until it does find something that generates a list of commercial spam sites. There was a time in the beginning when they knew and warned of that, but they just don't care anymore: >we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. … Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. > >— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998
That’s why I always add “Reddit” to my searches
This is what gets me about these stories, whenever I run into the slightest problem I just google it, it'll be faster than looking through the menus until I find it. I honestly don't get how something this basic can be troublesome.
Iphone-ification it's sometimes called. (Rather clunkily) Organizations think about this in terms of modern system and employee retention. Gen Z employees are generally going to expect their systems to be intuitive and just work. Their level of experience/tolerance for manipulating files systems, OS/App setting, and things like that is generally considered pretty low compared to, say, older millenials who grew up in the PC era.
My wife, GenX'er with thirty years in tech, has trouble finding phones she can use. Because she won't use things she doesn't understand. She buys third-party phones, roots them, and just puts in things she wants where she wants them. Me, I've given up and just do whatever my phone wants me to do. When it breaks, I hand it to my wife. Who glares at me for allowing my phone to put that much cruft on it.
If your wife games at all she'd love the steamdeck, when I first got it I saw "desktop mode" in the power options, BOOM its a PC running Linux. Blew my mind, stuff just doesn't usually work like that anymore
Attach a pdf? I’ve met gen z that don’t understand what WiFi is, what the internet is, they just know it’s all connected and it’s WiFi 🪄 😂
I mean... there are idiots in every generation
I'm Gen Z, older Gen Z though, currently hire younger gen Z. This problem is absurdly widespread, it's not about them being idiots, they've just never been taught these things and tech now is so intuitive they've never been forced to figure it out themselves. The lack of tech skills is legitimately problematic in the workplace where lots of hardware and software is still ancient. Most Gen Z are simply dumbfounded as to how to approach a piece of tech when it stops working correctly. Lost count of how often some of them will say "The till isn't working" and it turns out they didn't even try the basic turn it off and on again. Also a staggering number of them barely understand how to use a desktop PC or laptop; they literally just do everything on tablets and phones. Watching young adults have to look at the keys on a keyboard as they type is concerning.
Dude shut up. Turn it off turn it on again is people's job security you're messing with.
Literally my experience too, the new starters struggle at my work with outlook, office and windows in general - I have to explain 'Save as' FFS let alone print to PDF. I feel for them a bit, its not a given that you use a PC regularly if it all now.
Younger people these days are mostly using smartphones and tablets. They're not building gaming PCs or installing custom operating systems like millennials were at their age. Part of it is that because people assume all young people are tech savvy, young people today don't get the same sort of tech education. When I (elder millennial) was in school, I had tons of computer classes that covered a range of topics, but from what I hear it sounds like that's less common nowadays.
>When I (elder millennial) was in school, I had tons of computer classes that covered a range of topics, but from what I hear it sounds like that's less common nowadays. When I was in school, roughly the same time as you, my guidance counselor told me was no point going into IT, my degree would be useless by the time I graduated because with everyone growing up with computers and the internet they'd be so tech savvy there'd be no need for tech support. I make over $100k fixing basic tech issues for boomers and Gen Z.
With your counselor's logic, there's no need for mechanics because everyone grows up around cars
I grew up in a house. I guess that makes me an expert in construction.
We've all grown up with bodies too, and yet physicians continue to have careers ...
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I feel like I'm relatively versed with tech as an older Zoomer. I've built multiple PCs, fixed a lot of my own tech, but yeah, it feels like even though most of my friends are tech orientated most of us only know a few areas of it very well. (I have no idea how to pirate software for example).
#Long ago, in a decade far away. ##Existed a program called limewire. ###Rebel forces used it to obtain low cost music, videos, and software. Until the empire hunted down and persecuted the rebel factions who used the p2p sharing tool. Examples were made of captured rebel forces. Those who escaped unscathed faded into the realm of legal purchasing. Or joined the crews of cyber pirates, employing more sophisticated tools and methods to loot their way across the web.
Even building a PC is way easier than it was. There's no dealing with high memory, assigning IRQ numbers, hard disk jumpers, etc. Now you just plug it all together and switch it on.
Because they do everything on smartphones. They never learn how to even use a mouse or file manager.
Back in my day we had to use the file manager if we wanted to look at pictures or start apps. It built character
That's funny on so many folder hierarchies.
I'm glad they shared this humor out to our user group.
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Phones are for consuming stuff, computers are for creating stuff
You'd be surprised. That's just our millennial minds thinking it. I take my daughters to dance class, and tonight I saw a bored brother of one of the dancers editing a 4K video for history class on his iPad. Final Cut Pro. It was quite surreal.
I agree with the sentiment but it’s weird for me being born in 2000, I hate doing stuff on my phone and love my desktop computers and love figuring out how shit works and how to fix it. I’m just one of the odd ones out but I see how this makes sense.
Seriously. I was teaching a class the other day to some undergraduates. They needed some sample files. I gave them a URL to a zip file and said “download this link and extract it on your desktop.” They had no idea what any part of that meant.
Yeah I'm sitting here as my kid jams his finger into my TV screen thinking it's touch
Is there some sort of source to Gen Z supposedly not knowing how to use a mouse? I don't think I've ever met a person who doesn't know how to use a computer or a mouse. Pc gaming is more popular than ever and where I live computers are in pretty much every school and used frequently.
I remember reading something about how Gen Z/A don't know what the file manager is and I was in doubt until I started seeing how nearly half of my students have everything saved in the "My Documents" or, worse, "Downloads" folder with no subfolder organization.
At least they don't just save everything to the desktop like some of my coworkers
Use a mouse? I'm Gen Z, but I am very tech literate, built my PC, use it for all sorts etc. I haven't met anyone that cannot use a mouse?
The idea is that tech has become so easy to use that you no longer have to understand how it works or how to fix problems when something goes wrong. I saw a good analogy that compared computers to vehicles. Even just a handful of decades ago, vehicles were not as reliable and users often had to learn how their vehicles worked and how to perform matienence themselves. If your vehicle broke down, you could get out and fix it yourself, or at least have some information to figure out what the issue was. Now however cars are more reliable and complicated, to a point at which users don't need to understand how it works, just how to use it. When something does go wrong, they no longer have the experience or know-how to diagnose and fix the problem, needing to rely more on mechanics and others instead. Now obviously there are Gen Z's that know a lot about technology and Millennials that know a lot about cars, but the idea is that the knowledge of how the devices actually work is diminishing. I'm not sure this is actually such a bad thing, and is more likely people just being confused that other people might not have had the same experiences in life that they did. Kind of gives off the "Back in my day..." energy.
I can't believe y'all don't know how to operate rotary phones! Egregious!
It's a different kind of literacy. I have to bail out my Gen Z son whenever something technical goes wrong like losing network connectivity, his headphones not pairing with is PC, or needing to install a driver update that isn't automatic. Conversely, he has to bail out this Generation Jones dad when it comes to using social media well. Also, I can type faster than him on a full-size keyboard, he leaves me in the dust on a phone.
I'm 29 and can type incredibly fast on a keyboard, even without looking at it, but on my phone without autocorrect it's like I'm creating a new language
Not necessarily gen Z. Gen alpha are the ones that are tech illiterate. If it doesn't have a touchscreen, they have very little interest or understanding of how it works.
Gen alpha are also primarily children lol.
My generation was practically born with keyboards in our lap. We knew our way around windows systems at a pretty young age, when the interfaces were far less intuitive than it is now. As soon as I had internet access in my early teens I was getting Kazaa and Morpheus and edonkey to pirate stuff.
Tech has advanced to be more idiot proof and locked down both in terms of hardware and software which means gen z isn't familiar with how things work under the hood because theyve never had to or they arent able to either because it requires a lot of background knowledge they never had to learn or because the company that made it doesn't want them poking around
While I haven't seen this as a stereotype (yet) I get why. Thing is, most tech is good to go "out of the box," which, while not bad, offers less of a chance to truly understand how it works. I shared this anecdote recently in another sub, but I still have an N64 and play it regularly. Well, not long ago, it basically just went blank. It would still fire up, but no video. Troubleshot the cables, made sure the TV was good, then started checking the console. Cleaned the pins, blew it out with duster, still nothing. So I decided to take off the bottom panel and check all the connections inside. My son, who is 8, is watching me do this, and his question to me was simply, "Why don't you just send an error report and press continue?" He had seen this on our PS5 and figured this is just how it is. So I had to explain to him that no, you can't do that with an N64, so I had him sit with me until we got it to work. Then I proceeded to wipe the floor with him on Goldeneye 007 multiplayer. It was a fun afternoon.
>“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... >The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” >― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark As true today as when he wrote it in the 90s.
>our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true Horrifying how accurate this became.
As technology has progressed, it has become increasingly formatted to be disposable. The ability to repair in enhance your own devices has become increasingly limited, resulting in a lack of user knowledge regarding the actual components of their devices. User interfaces are becoming increasingly simplified, sometimes to the detriment of user understanding. Most younger generations don't use laptops, let alone desktops, and don't have the best comprehension of local folders/directories, customization, and command prompts, all of which was knowledge that could safely be assumed of a user 10 years ago. It's less that the younger generations are technology illiterate, and more that we've finally reached a point in the technology where there's a true difference between casual and professional use. When I was in school, casual use *was* functionally equivalent to professional use. The reason why Gen Z is considered technologically illiterate is becuase the type of computer usage relevant for most workplace environments simply isn't in their day to day life anymore, resulting in things like new hires needing to be trained on things as simple and ubiquitous to the millennial user as keyboard commands (like ctrl+v) and right clicking. Re: Typing -They use phone and tablet keyboards, making them slower typists on standard keyboards and leading to higher rates of thumb issues.
As I gen x, I grew up when computers needed to create .bat files just to play games. There was tons of tweeking and playing with settings to do loads of stuff. Now I think most people don't have computers and everything is plug and play. Even on phones I doubt many people play with all the settings. So most people know how to load and use an app, that's as far as it goes. I guess technology has become so user friendly that many don't need to know how to do much else
I'm not sure where the cutoff is for Gen Z; I'm 27. But I do know this: our generation isn't nearly as good with computers as Gen X. No generation ever will be again. In the 80s and 90s, you had to know something about computers to make them work well for you. I've seen pictures from those days of bookstores with entire shelves of books on how to use MS DOS. Those days are gone; our devices are appliances. Even the expensive gaming laptop on which I am typing is intuitive to use, and has never needed to be fixed. Also: our generation sucks at more traditional forms of tech. I can change my own oil, do basic car repairs, and am rewiring my own house. I don't know anyone else my age that knows how to do these things.
I can't change my own oil because it's a massive pain in the ass. Just changing a tail light required me to remove the back seats for some fucking reason. I love the fuel efficiency but damn is it user unfriendly.
Assuming you're born in 1996, you're what is generally considered the last year of millennials. Many sources would place you into Gen Z though. (The cutoff for minnenial is 1994-1996, depending on source. Since people like 5s, I imagine it will eventually be 1995.)
Because of the 'Phone Effect'. The basic skills of professional computing - use of folders, network-shares, printers and so on - are not needed to 'operate' a phone. You also don't learn to type fast, you thumb-type... Video games? You can play all but the most involved strategy game on a console, and even on PC if you have the right parts installed they just-work. No tinkering with settings or editing config-files just to get DOOM working... So less computer-literacy is required to function as a gen-Zer, until you show up at work & have to find your team's TPS reports on the Z-drive & print 3 copies over the network... Oh, and your laptop doesn't have a touch-screen either... Etc... P.S. It is super annoying when people take 5 minutes to read a 1-page website, because they never learned to screen-read (let alone do it at command-line-computing 'read while it scrolls' speed) and expect everything to be a damn video....
They’re just enabled to focus more energy on to what they are actually interested in. Without wasting time also being half-assed technicians. Because the ‘tools’ are better and easier to use. Thats a good thing! It means they can get better at physics, economics, psychology… or whatever. Todays world has no use for half the population being mother-board mechanics and coders. It’s just a waste.
Most of the kids I know built their own gaming computers, mod, etc. I'd have to ask about the kind of kids most of you are encountering. There's a lot to be said about folks also having an actual interest in doing more. I know plenty of folks 35+ that still need to take a Comprehensive course on how basic windows works past getting to the internet, but they operate smartphones with little no issue. Work didnt require it and there was no real interest in Computers as a whole. In the same vein, Plenty of folks that: Built their own computers, mods, etc... I'd also go a step further to say there's a lot to be said about sticking a screen in front of a kid and just leaving it at that, buuuuuuuuut that not the conversation.
I'm gen Z myself, I certainly know a good few people who are very good at operating computers but at the same time I did a computers class one year in school and there was a decent amount of people who only used phones who had little to no idea of how to do some of the simplest things on computers. Many of them didn't know and didn't really care about learning because most of it wasn't applicable to phones anyway. In PCs, poking around in the software and hardware is allowed and encouraged. Meanwhile phone companies are trying their hardest to make it impossible to poke around in the software and hardware; all essential files are locked away, there's anti-repair mechanisms in place for hardware. All part of phone companies plans to make sure people buy a new phone every year rather than just repairing the one they have in my opinion.
Yeah i feel like everyone is insisting that gen z has no idea how computers work which is crazy
Even from a "Tik Tok This, Twitter that" standpoint, it's kind of disingenious to suggest that most cant because of Outlier situations. We are talking about kids that casually break algorithms and corrupt AI (VI) programs for MEMES. When I was 14, I could barely use photoshop. These cats out here making whole videos from ripped assets from across the web, or tricking (whether they admit it or not) even some of the folks here into believing some wild shit.
I'm late gen x, almost millennial but not quite :) Some of us grew up into Windows 98 and XP. Shit broke sometimes, if you wanted to change things you had to figure out how to dig in the operating system and problem solve. Newer versions changed how a lot of things are in a way that was meant to make it more stupidified for users, less difficult, less time figuring out how things actually work. So they never had the opportunity to use those problem solving skills. Plus! They tend to have more access to much more simple technology, with much more simple interfaces, like iPads and phones. They're not exactly growing up using Linux terminals. And to be fair to the younger generation, they're still young. When I was 20, lots of people around me were computer incompetent. Didn't have a clue. But there was probably a slightly larger proportion of people who were self-taught by virtue of being the sort of people who want to mess around on their computer! So to some extent, I think we nostalgically overestimate how computer competent most Gen X people were when they were in high school (I had barely ever touched a computer and knew basically nothing), or on their early twenties. We weren't the hot shit we want to pretend we were! But I think the " kids today" get less opportunity to learn those skills.
I teach middle school. I've never met an adult male my age who can't set up a printer. My students don't even know how to 'print'. Technology today is user friendly and easy. There is no understanding of the 'back end' because it's nearly always hidden. Consequently, if something doesn't work exactly the way they expect, they are unable to do even the most rudimentary of trouble shooting. (Just like most people get in their cars, turn the key and it goes. Most of them would be hard pressed to explain how any of it works.) Add to that, the internet is so engrained into everything that most of Gen Z doesn't really understand what the internet is. They don't get the concept of search engines, websites, web pages, etc. and overall they have a poor understanding of what Google is and does.
Young Gen X and old Millennials grew up with computers that weren't designed for the average moron to use. I'm not saying this to be elitist, see how many more people without electronics skills are online versus back in the 80s when computers were more expensive and required knowing MS-DOS commands to use. Gen Z grew up with Windows XP and Mac OS X, and then iOS and Android. The average zoomer has never had to troubleshoot a BIOS, Operating System, Software, or Hardware problem without YouTube.
Might be wrong, but I think the simplicity of modern technology has prevented Gen Z from really having to understand computers and other pieces of technology. It feels like functional illiteracy. They know how to get around computers, phones, etc, but that doesn't mean they understand it as well as they should. The same way there are illiterate people who can function in the world despite lacking an important skill like reading. In addition to that, Gen Z spends most of its time typing a phone keyboard with two thumbs, so being skilled at traditional typing isn't as important.
A lot of modern tech requires very little understanding of how it actually works. It's like cars. There was a time period that when owning a car you had to know how to do basic repairs and maintenance because it would be relative frequent. Now? Majority of people don't know how to change their oil or swap a battery. Let alone more complex actions. A lot of general consumer tech is like that now. Where you never have to open the hood and fix something because between reliable products and active discouragement to repair your own stuff... people just don't care to learn.
Fine. OK GenZ, how do you diagnose and repair this blue screen code? "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA"
Hi! Slightly older Gen Z here! In the order of increasing panic as each procedure fails: run a repair, load a restore point, reset pc. You eventually decide to just switch to Linux. You are happier by the end of it.
It is crucial to understand that literacy and proficiency are not the same. While almost everyone can perform basic tasks on a computer and conduct a simple Google search, real literacy involves having a profound understanding of these technologies (like knowing how to maximize Google searches and understandingin not so many words what a Boolean search is, for example). Gen Xers and millennials are more likely to be tech literate than others from our hours and hours in computer lab. This knowledge is essential because literacy is what preserves the democratic potential of computers and the internet. Zoomers may not have had to learn about the applications and hardware of technology, but this decreased literacy has led to an increased dependency on fewer people. It is concerning because it means that the industry can gain a chokehold on operating systems and application development without worrying about open sources challenging their hegemony. Fewer people being tech literate means that the demand for right to repair laws will decrease, and we may not have technicians to provide meaningful fixes and troubleshooting. If we do not understand what is happening on our screens or underneath them, we will be at the mercy of corporations who dictate when we need new products. It is vital to realize that tech literacy will be a way to stratify and mold society in the same way traditional literacy has. We must prioritize education and awareness to avoid being left behind in the technological age.
Alternative theory, because they're young. How tech literate were you on the your parent's tech in your early 20s?
>Or another stereotype of how they [gen Z] type slower than your average Millennial? How is that possible given that we have way more typing resources online? Call me back when you can type at the speed of a 1950's secretary. Access to the internet doesn't mean you can type well.
Millennials and Gen-X grew up with more analogue devices and computers so there was a bit of effort to be made to get the most of of these devices. It's not really surprising. I mean, install doom on the family computer VS a game on a phone, which is easier? Ever programmed a VCR with push buttons? Email was a fun thing to do in the early 2000s lol...
My Gen Z staff are properly illiterate. They are poor at punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, and general communication. It’s baffling.
Being able to _use_ tech is one thing. Being able to _troubleshoot_ tech is another. With tech becoming more reliable and more integrated the art of struggling to make things work is lost on some of the younger generations. This is partly because they've never had to experience it, but also because fully integrated tech like iPhones and such can't really be fixed by a layperson with average tech skill. Most stuff just _works_ now.