My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We’re in our early 40s.
I am an older millennial born in 83 and I’ve been in IT for about 21 years now and grew up building and fixing PCs for everyone. I think the newer generation is going to be the ones that need the most help. Might be anecdotal but in my years in IT at first it was the older folks with all the problems taking on and using tech. Now it’s the younger kids coming in. In my opinion it’s the way we consume tech now. All tech in the 80’s - early 2000’s required a lot of tinkering and figuring out I always figured the older folks were just set in their ways and didn’t want to learn anything new. My first 15 years in IT I always heard people say “I’m not a computer person” as an excuse to not knowing how to change a signature in outlook, an app they’ve been using for a while, or some other basic business app everyone should know how to use.
Now consumer tech just works. Out of the box you don’t need to tinker or do shit to the stuff. Younger gen is coming us used to shit just working and when anything goes wrong they don’t do well with troubleshooting also companies make anything beyond basic troubleshooting nearly impossible without them so most just don’t try to figure shit out. This type of behavior is getting worse now people get tech that can do a few hundred things and they only use it for two of the few hundred and now you are stuck trying to explain how to do basic tech tasks to an end user who is just going to forget it an hour or so later.
I’ve noticed this with IT employees and the rest of the business. Maybe I’m just a salty IT guy but I do cyber security now and the tech skill levels are just bad and it causes me grief on a regular basis.
I feel this is very similar to working on a car. Back in the day they fixed those things up until they crumbled to dust. Pretty much EVERYONE’S dad knew how to do at least a little something on the car. But I didn’t. The car was just a tool, not a hobby, my dad would fix things when they went wrong and sometimes I’d help and learn a bit, but other than that, I had it repaired or tagged it for a new one.
Cars were always there and easily accessible, but I had to learn DOS to play video games! Computers are now our dad’s cars.
I think this is an apt analogy in more ways than one!
Older cars, you really did have to keep messing with them to keep them running and if you had to go to the mechanic every time, it would be too expensive, so it was almost a necessity. Just like with computers 2 decades ago.
These days you hear of people who drive a Honda for 100,000 miles without even changing the oil once and it just keeps running somehow. Why bother learning to fix something like that?
Feel this, I was lucky(?) enough to have a mechanic living at my house who basically told me to fix it myself, he guided me through of course but he emphasized how important it is doing these things on your own.
That guy cannot figure out how youtube works and he’s only 45.
I’d say it all depends on how much you had to use something, while the hurdles in software may seem small to someone experienced. those who are first trekking through see it as a huge wall
Also keep in mind things are less tinkerable now, especially cars and there are a ton of added anti self repair things added that weren’t there before
100%
My buddy bought a new BMW after decades of working on older models. The whole bottom is covered in plastic. You can’t jack it up on the side of the road without a part you have to buy from BMW. Then the brake caliper bolts were metric half size. He sold it the same month he bought it.
100% this.
I have even noted a huge deterioration since I have been in the IT industry, and that’s just been since the mid 2000’s
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People have no idea how to do basic process of elimination troubleshooting anymore.
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They have no ability to look at logs and extrapolate what could be going on.
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They don’t understand how to use a search engine effectively anymore or how to rapidly filter through large amounts of information to find answers (I have no idea why)
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The ability to understand how the various bits of tech actually work together and how this is happening seems to be getting more and more lost. So then which things fail people have no idea where to start.
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More and more products as you said “just work”… Until they don’t and give you jack shit to go on.
Basically just “oh… It didn’t work, try again later” nothing is more infuriating than something not working and also giving you no information to troubleshoot, it’s why I am basically allergic to anything made by Apple in particular but this is becoming more and more the standard.
They don’t understand how to use a search engine effectively anymore or how to rapidly filter through large amounts of information to find answers
This bit, at least, may be at least as much a fault of the environment - the increasing awfulness of search results these days. It used to be you could search a specific issue (e.g., “borked.exe high CPU usage” or “how to partition a drive”) and your first results would be relatively well-written sites run by actual tech people. More recently, though, it feels like:
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The first 5-8 results are near-identical “help” sites that are 40% introduction, 40% basic troubleshooting steps, 15% “download our app!”, and 5% actually useful tips.
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There are tech site results listed… but they’re from 2016, a different software version, maybe even a different OS.
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"Okay, so, to fix this problem you first need… [SIGN IN TO CONTINUE READING]
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If you’re very, very lucky, you’ll find a Reddit (or now, Lemmy) thread on the issue.
I’d consider myself pretty technically savvy, and even I find it frustrating to search for IT info or fixes these days. The newest problem is AI-written answers cooked up for you on the spot, which are frequently completely unhelpful yet pushed to the top of the results.
Exactly this.
I’ve been tinkering with computers since the mid 90s, and I lost count of how many I built or repaired years ago, but now, using Google to check something I’ve forgotten just leads to sales pages and massively out of date articles that were ‘last updated’ three days ago.
On top of that, you’ve got sites like the official Microsoft help site giving bad advice. Everything is just run sfc /scannow then dism /whatever. I genuinely saw a question recently where someone asked what to do when dism /online-cleanup doesn’t work, and the top answer, marked as correct by the mods was, run dism /online-cleanup.
Online search results have been optimised for seo so much now that finding the right answer can be very difficult.
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Don’t forget that those first 5-8 sites are all written by a aithat doesn’t know what it’s doing! You can tell those apart from ones written by a person because they cram as many keywords in different combinations as they can. Like, if you searched “windows 10 Firefox connection error” the first result will be:
"How to fix Firefox Connection Error in Windows 10
Firefox connection errors in windows 10 are annoying. Luckily, there is an easy way in windows 10 to fix Firefox conne tion errors. The Firefox connection errors in windows 10 can be caused by a few different problems. In this article we will explain how to fix Firefox connection errors in windows 10."
It’s infuriating, because those articles inevitably are wrong about the solution, but they’re always the top results because they win the keyword battle. I use QWant for my search engine now, and while it’s WAY better than Google it still serves some of those sites up when I’m troubleshooting something because the keywords are just too strong.
Hah, I think I twitched a bit just reading that! Those stupid SEO answers drive me absolutely insane.
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You’re not alone. The generation raised on the iPhone/iPad struggle to figure out how to use a “real” computer and everything related to it. There’s all sorts of studies about it.
Nah, it’s a thing. Youngest of the Millennial generation and I can concur with your comment after being in IT for a few years - pretty much it’s either Baby Boomers or Gen Z people who have a tough time with technology, with a 50/50 shot of a Gen X person being either super tech savvy or a technological troglodyte. AI has also made things worse since it can now do some light coding, but I’ve seen some people use it to code out entire projects only for it to not work properly at all or break UI on websites.
I’d argue that Gen Z is the worst for the same reasoning in your post: everything works OOTB, and if something goes awry then they don’t know anything or can’t do things the old-fashioned way - which at least Baby Boomers have the option to if they want to be stubborn enough.
It’s funny you say that. Husband and I are 2 years apart in age. It’s amazing what 2 years does. He doesn’t understand tech. At all. He’s definitely gen x. I grew up being told I was gen x but now I might be millennial, I might be gen x or I might be a weird 2 year micro generation between the two. I’m really good with tech. I can just look at things and generally see how they work. I also started using tech/computers a lot earlier than he did, so maybe that’s why.
also companies make anything beyond basic troubleshooting nearly impossible
I hadn’t really thought about this before, but it’s a pretty good point. Not just the companies who make the tech, but employers and providers seem do just about everything in their power to get you to submit a ticket or (even worse) chat with “support” rather than give you the tools to solve the damn problem yourself.
And the menus/settings you need to make more than superficial changes to your device get buried deeper every year.
It can be so frustrating. I’m not a tech person, but I can generally troubleshoot my way around most issues I come across. Windows updated on my home and work PC and it rendered the search function unusable on both. So I figured out how to fix the situation on my home PC and it was fine. Came in the next day to try to do the same thing on my work PC and was blocked by a request for Admin permissions, which I don’t have, our IT does. I had to send a request for IT to remote into my PC and type in a password so I could click two buttons and fix the issue myself. A 3 minute process became a 25 minute process where IT can now charge my company for the time they spent typing in a password.
There are actually studies already showing this, it’s because they grew up on iPads and apps and everything “just working” or dumbed down. I will look for a source but your anecdote lines up.
Now consumer tech just works. Out of the box you don’t need to tinker or do shit to the stuff.
I have the exact opposite experience , I happen to encounter software glitches nearly every day (especially in shitty apps like Spotify or Todoist) when back in the late 00’s/early 10’s everything worked as expected (except some occasional Windows blue screens or Linux kernel panics I guess), I guess it’s just because how companies design their software for normies and if you happen to use some more advanced features, you will encounter software bugs all the time.
Useful features are removed all the time because apparently marketing departments think that people don’t use them, and some of us depend on some things with no real alternatives.
Error messages were also actually helpful back then, nowadays it’s just “Something happened” or “Unknown error”, good luck finding out what’s the problem with that info.
Error messages on android be like “OOPSIE WOOPSIE!!! We maaade abiiig fucky wucky 3: ohhh noooo the isssueee is soo bad we so sooowwyyy!! Pwease, restart the app and if it isn’t fixed then go fuck yowsewf!!!”
We need to separate early Gen Z (I’d say 1996-2004) from late Gen Z & Gen Alpha. Early Gen Z was born pre-iPad and mostly used desktops and laptops as they grew up, with iPhones and iPads only becoming available later on. I may be biased being born in '02 but when I spoke to my IT teachers even they said that the younger kids were becoming more and more difficult to teach to the basics of using a desktop OS.
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Coming from a simulation software company here, not everyone in my company will know how to deal with servers or IT security and I think it’s ok. The programmers and engineers are brilliant, creative thinkers, all highly educated, but some just never bothered to learn this one thing. It’s almost offensive how our IT department treat the engineers, as if we’ll break anything we touch, but I get it from a security stand point.
As a student, I used to work part time in server maintenance for our uni, that’s how I personally got that knowledge. But even people working in the “tech industry” don’t all have the same sets of skills or tech interests.
Speaking of security, our company has found that students now account for the largest group to fall for phishing scams. It used to be the older folks, but gen z doesn’t seem to understand email. They’re used to DMs on authenticated and moderated platforms and they don’t get that anyone can send an email and pretend to be anyone else.
I used to use the analogy of snail mail and how anyone can write anything on an envelope, but they aren’t familiar with that either.
Hahaha, okay, that’s somewhat funny
Ditto, I have to say I’m appalled on a daily basis how software developers I work with are so foreign with the tools they use to earn a living.
Extremely infuriating as well.
i could be thinking this because i grew up around tech but im from 2002 i feel like im WAYYY ahead of the curb for tech problems. NOTHING EVER WORKS and the internet only has solutions that are close to what i need which teaches you how to extrapolate instructions til eventually you hardly need google. making minecraft servers always cause a lot of headache whether it be java not working or port not forwarding. mods not loading or an internet problem causing lag but its a wirlesscard thing not the internet ugh. or just lag in general blah blah
bottom line is im tech support for my friends and my friends are illiterate
You should see my zoomer partner and friend try to work a computer. They all grew up on iPads 😅
I swear I saw a study that basically came to the conclusion that there is a distinct curve in technological literacy where younger generations are used to tech “just working” and not knowing how to navigate anything outside of app-based interface. Take all of this with a handful of salt bc I don’t have source on hand.
This is a very interesting point and I can see it throughout zoomer culture when it comes to the down and dirty technical stuff, but I think there’s a distinction to be made between being technically apt and being able to grok whatever the hot shit consumer-grade tech paradigm is right now.
In the former context, a lot of zoomers have already “failed” but that context is the territory of people who reach out to learn it - in other words, the nitty gritty tech stuff will always be for the technical types. In the latter context, I imagine millennials will probably mostly be fine and zoomers will, too. I say “mostly” because we’re already seeing millennials start to kind of skip the latest trends (TikTok comes to mind immediately). Zoomers are already coming to grips with not being able to understand Alphas sense of humor via memes. Whatever the next social media platform is, I imagine it’ll be primarily a home for Alphas, leaving zoomers and millennials where they are.
Will there be spillover across the board, with members of different generations populating the other platforms? Sure, there are always exceptions.
As far as physical tech goes, like how millennials got the smartphone and zoomers grew up with it? It’s highly dependent on how ingrained it becomes in society. Hard to exist without a smartphone these days, so everybody has to know how to use one. Boomers have more trouble because they got it later, but there are plenty of them who are just fine with current phone tech precisely because they need to be for professional AND personal use.
As a instructor of IT I can absolutely confirm. A lot of Gen Z have not grown up with computers as a tool. I have a class of around 20 students, and maybe 4-5 have any knowledge of the various compression archives. I have to give primers on the proper way to save various file types otherwise they’ll just create default.config.txt (6) and wonder why an install isn’t working.
I thought you said zoomer parents and was about to get really mad and sad at the time.
I mean older Gen Z are 20-24. I’m a millennial and I was a dad at 23 haha. It’s early, but not unreasonably so.
To 26 actually. Gen Z starts in 1997.
Eh the borderline years are all subjective.
But yes. Mid twenties is a reasonable time to start having kids
Heh heh heh, I thought he said Boomer parents and I was wondering where the heck they got iPads
Yeah, this is a thing. I know a lot of younger folks who don’t really have a clue about how to do something if they don’t have iOS version whatever or some other bespoke interface. (And no, I’m not a boomer)
CLI ultimately runs the world, and the younger folks who understand CLI are probably at a ratio roughly even to the other generations.
What’s a computer?
Work tech retail, a lot of young people don’t know shit about any tech tbh
It’s because everything is now UI driven and done for them. They didn’t have to debug or solve computer issues. It’s a sad state of affairs that the better technology gets the less the population understands it. I’d say, with respect to this post, millennials may be the only generation that can truly problem solve tech, both past and future.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing
Not sure why this got downvoted. Things “just working” have a lot of upsides too: saving time, better accessibility, etc.
I think so too, but oh well, people disagreed and that’s okay :D
No one is saying things should not just work. The problem is they still break sometimes and people have no idea what to do because it’s rarer now. Also when you get into the business world, you need to use an actual computer to do work. A tablet is not going to cut it. Tablets are mostly for consuming/using, not creating. It’s a lot easier if you know how to use a computer to do that (Windows, Mac, whatever but you need to understand that basics).
It really depends on the kind of work you do. My mindset is, if you’re interested in it, invest time in learning about it. If not, then not. We don’t have to go all “kids these days…” or look down on people who aren’t as interested in techology as we are.
I don’t really. I was just explaining the reasoning there. It is still important to know how to use a computer. That said, I’ve worked in IT and many people of all ages are pretty terrible with tech anyway lol.
They don’t know how to troubleshoot tech. Gen X and early millennials had to get things to work far more often than later generations. Today most things just work.
Even beyond troubleshooting.
Basic things I’d expect people to know:
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What and HDMI cable is
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what an Ethernet cable is
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That Samsung isn’t the only Android manufacturer
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That different tablets are different shapes/sizes and hence use different cases (seems like common sense to me but apparently not)
Etc…
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For sure. Gen X here. I was in IT during the wild west days (90s) and it was glorious!
You’d never hear from (and might even never see) those that knew anything.
Yea I definitely don’t expect to hear as much from those who are more educated, the sample group is not neutral.
but with such a large sample size I still find it worrying.
No, I think we’ll be fine. It’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha that are acting like boomers in regards to technology. My eldest niece and eldest nephew are tech-illiterate even though they grew up with PCs, tablets, and smartphones in their daily lives.
My eldest nephew can’t figure out how to use Libby, or how to install unlock origin on his mobile Firefox browser, and my eldest niece has no idea how to troubleshoot or look up solutions to any tech problems at all.
It’s frustrating and I had ban them from asking me anything tech related because I got tired of being the free, family tech support. Now I tell them “well, what did the sources say after you researched the solution?” And that always shuts them both up because I know they didn’t even try looking up the solution on their own.
They also have the bad habit of believing everything they read online. I tried telling them both that they should look at more than one source when researching important information (nephew was doing a paper on the American Civil War) and they stared at me like I was nuts.
They are the living, breathing examples of Intelligence VS Wisdom.
I think us Millennials will, for the most part, have an easy time keeping up with new tech, even as we get older.
Man that is my biggest pet peeve is someone coming to me asking for help saying IT DOESN’T WORK without either trying to figure it out or even doing the tiniest bit or research. It usually takes one single Google search. My mother in law thinks she has the nuclear codes and she’s gonna blow everything up if she touches her laptop wrong
I don’t really like bashing or putting the new generations in negative light… But in this case it is true. Late gen x, Millennials, and early gen z grew up with computers and tech that was more troublesome and where forced to learn how to naturally troubleshoot. On top of that we got eased into the more advanced and user friendly stuff.
Later generations where born with the easier user friendly stuff and don’t have to troubleshoot nearly as much.
Of course this is also a generalization and does not reflect on an individual bases
Every piece of tech today is made so that it works out of the box with usually a tutorial on an app showing you what to do. So, yeah, young people have a hard time with tech because 95% of the time, it works out of the box.
It’s easy to blame them, but they never really had to debug anything. The tech has been dumbed down all the way so that anyone that is remotely functional can use it.
Yea, I don’t like bashing my niblings generation either, but it’s not just the two of them I’ve had to provide tech support to; my cousins kids as well. They all act like troubleshooting is an alien concept and panic when the WiFi stops working on their tablets.
Fortunately my nephew’s high school has a computer class he’s required to take. I hope he learns something useful.
I’m thinking new interfaces/concepts of interaction might be where we lose touch.
Just like the previous baby boom generation had people with a lot of technical knowledge about for example how punch cards were used to configure computers and how to type with an old typewriter, we might know much about more advanced technical software and touch interfaces, but many might skip the Snapchat/TikTok scene and feel out of place.
Not to mention future upcoming things like a Brain-Computer Interface connected to an AI; perhaps to socialize, to create tools / content. Some of us, and maybe you as well, will join this scene too, but I already see people giving up and staying away from new stuff.
We will have a role in the technical side because of our knowledge, but that core knowledge is not that important any longer in many fields just like most developers don’t have to worry about machine code any more.
Programming with punch cards was a niche skill very few had.
People who grew up in the 80s and 90s didn’t just grow up with tech, we grew up with rapidly evolving tech that ranged from clunky and buggy to completely intuitive. We definitely have a better chance of keeping up as we age.
Social media like Snapchat/TikTok is less about knowing how to use tech and more “who gives a damn?” I care about that about as much as learning about Pokemon. Just toys for kids that I will never need or want to know about. THAT sort of generational divide is inevitable.
There’s actually a regression where millennial who grew up with pc are still the best at it gen z is as bad as boomers. If it’s not an app or website they are lost at even the smallest issue.
I notice this way more today with my job. The people we used to hire for computer support would know most of the things they were supposed to. Today most of the people we hire it seems like they can only follow a script or SOP and that’s it, basic troubleshooting or logic just goes out the window. It’s super sad… and even worse having to manage them.
Edit: I also don’t think it helps that they only get to deal with systems that have been made so user friendly anymore that most options to do anything are just built in or a command away so they really never deal with any of the stuff underneath to figure out how systems run.
I constantly think of the ObiWan meme. They were supposed to be the chosen ones. They were supposed to be better with tech, not worse.
Just like there are exceptions to all boomers being bad at tech, there is definitely are exceptions to the gen z thing as well and I hope I am one of those exceptions.
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I think most millennials and and gen-x folks will be totally fine.
I don’t want to sound like one of those “kids these days” people, but kids these days have it rough.
I work in tech and old folks, mainly boomers, are usually ok to work with when it comes to tech, because they know they don’t understand it. They grew up without it, avoided it when possible, embraced it when necessary, but they know that requires effort, and they’re just generally not interested. I get that. They just need some reps and to feel comfortable, and they get it.
Most gen-z folks have grown up in a world where you just click things and they work. As a general rule, gen-x grew up in an era where you had to tinker with the hardware and software yourself if you wanted to do something. As a millennial, I had it easier. Most of the hardware was sorted, but some of the software was not, so you still had to do some configuration yourself if you wanted something to work.
Gen-z hasn’t had that. If app A doesn’t work, download app B. They’re so used to things just working, they have no idea how to troubleshoot anything. In that way, they’re usually worse than boomers. Generally a boomer will make an effort to try to fix something, understanding it’s outside their wheelhouse. The zoomer won’t and just stops in their tracks.
For example, a boomer will mangle the displayport connection on their computer trying to plug their HDMI cable into it. It looked like it would fit. The zoomer doesn’t understand they need to plug in the computer to the monitor. The computer is already plugged in to the wall. Why plug it in again? Both things I have seen in the last 3 months. If someone thinks their computer is broken but it just needs the monitor turned on, they’re more often under 25 than over 55.
Again, these are generalizations. There are individuals who don’t fit into these trends. This is just my experience.
I love new tech and I’m gen X. I’ve learned new tech all my life. What will fuck me going forward is bad UI. At some point graphic designers decided a dark gray font was better than black. All the keyboard shortcuts I used were changed by Microsoft and I’m still butt hurt about it. Still use MS office but grumpy with the Ribbon.
I’m GenX and I also hate the ribbon. 🤬
Consider switching over to Linux so you can customize your OS however you want 😀
Exactly, we grew up constantly learning new tech!
I was learning to use computer during the transition to the ribbon in Office 2007, but I actually preferred the ribbon to the old interface and these days I don’t mind it. Out of curiosity, what about the Ribbon annoys you guys?
Lost muscle memory and lost productivity. I didn’t really need to move the mouse much while using word programs, especially Excel. I think Microsoft stated during the transition the top end excel users lost something like 15-20% of their use speed? Something like that.
I actually miss the pop down menus that used to be accessible with the Alt key. Every single functional used to be listed there, albeit some things were sub functions, but the display had both icon and description. Icons alone are kind of annoying.
Ah! The other thing that pisses me off about the ribbon is that some parts of it are not visible until the use initiates a certain work type. Like picture functions are only visible if a picture is selected. What other hidden command groupings exist? A user can go poking around to discover what all Excel can do. Got to stumble into the magic combination of clicks to find what isn’t immediately visible.
I just want to add that OP goes straight from Boomers to Millenials, ignoring Gen X as usual.
Probably a good thing. As long as Gen X isn’t de facto lumped into boomers :-) I’m happy being forgotten in these inter generational wars.
Unfortunately, I think they do look upon us as boomers.
Not at all. I’m a late Gen Xer, almost a millennial. I thrive on learning new technology. I live for it.
I am sure some gen Xers do fail to adapt, but at the end of the day, I don’t even think it’s a generational thing: Some people adapt and keep moving, some people get stuck.
Yeah I know boomers that are more tech savvy than some millennial. Really if you are curious and have an interest, you would keep up even at Biden age
I know a few people who are and do. Even 20+ years ago, I can recall old people who taught very young me all sorts of “cutting edge” tech shit. I had a greybeard teach me about IRQ addresses in the 90s, I’ve since forgotten it all but that’s not really the point.
“Gotta change those jumpers, man!”
In my experience, if anything, late iterations of Gex X tend to be slightly better with new tech than Milennials, because we grew up having to know how it works in order to use it.
In the days of constant blue screen of death.
There seem to be a lot of us GenX /“Xenials” here in the fediverse already and I think that’s why. We don’t need everything handed to us in its final form.
The people that were near that X/Millennial transition are the best at adapting to new tech in my experience. Enough access to have a computer in their formative years but not far enough along for that computer to actually worked well.
Same. Except when teleporters come around. You’ll only teleport me over my dead body.
There might be popular tech out there right now that you don’t even know exists.
That’s the trouble. Not the ability to learn. But the knowledge that there is something new to learn at all. Or the need to learn it.
The older you get you just have less and less need to adopt new ways of doing things.
Me too
It seems like my generation (Gen Z) is a lot worst with technology than millenials. Most of my generation don’t know simple stuff like how filesystems and directories work or how extract a zipped folder. I blame the usage of phones as the primary computer and really dumbed down software that dosen’t allow any sort of self troubleshooting or configuring.
I actually think the opposite. Millennials grew up during the boom of technology and many had to rapidly adjust to all of that in a short amount of time. That’s why so many are so good at it. Gen Z on the other hand has trouble managing folders and files. This is largely due to tech getting easier… too easy almost. The direction of tech right now is AR/VR and my grandma was able to quickly grasp it because the controls are so natural.
I don’t think that millennials will be behind in the tech field, but trends? Yes.
No. If anything technological illiteracy seems to be increasing again with the younger generations. They’ve grown up on locked down systems that don’t encourage learning and exploration. It’s not their fault. It’s the tech companies and the schools who have made deals with the likes of Google.
That’s why I’m a big advocate for Linux and open-source software, because it’s computing with actual freedom. It’s good for people to realize that computers are basically just abstractions layered upon abstractions, but at the core of it is the simplicity of a switch being on or off (assuming binary for now). It’s not “magic” like some companies are fond of saying. It’s not even particularly complex in itself. It’s just a lot of simple parts working together. If you starts to understand those parts, then technology becomes demystified and you can often imagine how the underlying parts of any given system might work.
It’s my hypothesis that this generation that is most tech savvy. This was a time when you had to know how to use a computer in order to … use a computer. Today’s generation has grown up with the app operating systems. They don’t need to know the first thing about file manager or even ctrl-alt-del.
My wife is a teacher and often amazes her kids (age 15-18) by doing “ctrl+f”. So jepp, they have only surface level knowledge of the tools they are using.
I’m a teacher too and it shocks me. Even kids who are successful in school struggle to use a file system — usually just dumping everything into google drive and “searching it up” when they need it. I almost never see a kid directly type a url (let alone know what a url is) since they google everything.
I’ve even had this interaction:
“Why are you googling everything?” “I’m not googling this is safari, I have an iPhone”
In a lot of ways I think they’re worse than boomers. At least they’re good at making tik tok videos!
Yeah, there are plenty of people in my generation who grew up with computers, have watched phones evolve geom nokia 3210s to iphons all manner of magic folding phones etc who still do t know how to switch a comouter on or even use their phone outside of swiping through social media and even then its really basic knowledge.
It doesnt matter what generation you are. Its all about what interests you.
There are “boomers” in my work how can run rings around everyone when using certain applications or tech because thsts what they do every day.
The idea that age or generation affects your tech savvyness is just a fallacy
I disagree. I don’t think it’s age specifically, but rather your date of birth if that makes sense. It’s not that once you reach a certain age you are incapable of understanding something new. Millennials are good with technology because we grew up in a time where the internet was blooming and it made sense to adopt it into our lives. A lot of what we learned with regards to how the world works was through technology. Boomers already had a life that worked fine before the internet and had good reason to reject it. Now that technology is at the heart of everything they are decades behind millennials in their learning curve.
Obviously there are boomers who are tech wizards (and many whom we owe for how technology has shaped us for good or for bad) and there are millennials who suck at it. But to deny that there is no trend is ignorant.
At least boomers know how to fix stuff around the house using tools. They are just useless at fixing computers.
I would argue that’s actually a good thing for the average user. Computers and other personal electronics have become so reliable that you rarely have to delve into those tools as an average user. You can actually see the trend of simplification and everything but Windows - Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android are all immutable operating systems where user data and applications live separately from a read-only operating system partition. This is obviously not the case for all Linux distros but the point still stands.
Working in IT, I’m glad to see that despite the move to immutability in the Linux world, I actually have access to more tools than I did on base Ubuntu. blendOS and NixOS allowing you to spin up an operating system of your choice in a container, pull down whatever programs you want, all without cluttering your system? It really is the best of both worlds. Plus I still need a rock solid system, Knowing that I will always be able to apply an update without anything breaking is a huge win for all users. Back to the original point, technology has become so reliable and easy to use that you feasibly can just open your browser every morning and leave it at that. No hassling with clearing cache or anything, it just works.
Some of my fellow millennials surprise me, but you might be right in general
No I don’t think so. I think millennials were in a sweet spot where more of us had access to cheaper computers so more of us had the opportunity to use them compared to Gen x and boomers. The strange thing is Gen z are becoming pretty incompetent with computers in general these days because of how much easier computers have become overall. If anything goes wrong they have no troubleshooting skills unlike millennials who had the misfortune of growing up with OS’s like Windows ME. Source? I work in a high school and I see how bad the teenagers are all the time with general computer issues. They would much rather use their phone.
Speaking as a millennial I’m not bad at new technology but I really fucking hate how dumbed down and the planned obsolescence in everything nowadays. So that leads me to avoid using new shit a lot of the time. My phone for instance is 6 years old because there’s nothing currently available that wouldn’t be a downgrade in functionality. I’m also dreading getting a new car because all the newer ones I’ve been in have really shittily designed infotainment systems and a bunch of extra crap I don’t need. I really feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I look at where technology seems to be going these days compared to how optimistic I was a decade ago.
Yep, for a car you really only need a phone holder and Bluetooth (fuck it, you could even get one of those tape deck attachments). All the other infotainment stuff looks 5 years behind even in a brand new car.
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My daughter turns 4 soon and I already have an old PC for her birthday painted purple. She will learn the old ways, the ways of our people.
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It was actually really embarrassing for me. I thought “We can play curse of Monkey Island. Those point and click adventures would be great for her!”
Literally an hour later Im looking up a walkthrough on google…
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Best of luck! I remember giving my little brother his first PC - A Raspberry Pi 2 if I recall correctly.
