theres a generation of kids who don’t understand basic directories because of the mobile market and never actually used a pc in a regular usecase.
put in perspective, there are those who are more proficient on a touchscreen keyboard more than an actual keyboard.
I’ve also found (I’m a teacher) this generation is far less proficient at search. They (generalisation) type a whole question into Google, and read the Google created text box to get their answer, taking it as gospel - regardless of if Google has completely gone off the mark.
Contrast this to a generation that grew up with needing to refine search terms with key words, who can find far more relevant info quicker.
It’s hard to get them out of the rut and teach them to be more critical of sources. They’re so used to having what they need served straight up for them. LLMs (AI) are feeding into this more - they struggle to believe that AI hallucinations exist until I show them.
Again all this is generalisation - when I say ‘they’ I don’t mean ‘all’.
Couple of years back I used to help this kid with computer related stuff, and it really baffled me how he was nearly computer illiterate. He had no idea what make his laptop was, no idea what OS he was on, or any of the specs.
He called it a gaming laptop because he played games on it, but it was a pretty decent school/work thing without a dedicated GPU.
I’d always envisioned the younger generations getting better and better with tech, but it makes sense that won’t be the case as tech moves to be easier to use, more reliable, and less intrusive.
Modern iPads are nothing like the BS DOS/98 I grew up with.
Similar thing happened with cars. My grandpa would take them apart and reassemble them. my dad (somewhat generalizing to generations a bit) were really into cars and engines and would do some basic diy. I know nothing about them and don’t care to learn much.
I think computers are doing a similar thing. Millennials sit in the middle of the adoption and saw it emerge from more of a technology wild Wild West to being central to modern society. We could take the time to delve into details (since they mattered), but now it’s more taken for granted and things are there.
I guess, I’m just thinking it’s some sort of technology adoption thing that naturally plays out in a “victim if it’s own success” way.
That’s such a good point. Kind of blew my mind with it haha.
I think the situation is also somewhat different with cars. Old cars used to be much simpler to take apart and tinker with than modern cars. Computers and operating systems are still just as easy to pry apart (since the fundamentals haven’t changed since the 90s lol).
My theory is that as tech came to a wider appeal and became more user-friendly, more people are using it who don’t run into issues that need technical knowledge. Early OSes needed highly technical knowledge to use. Modern OSes can be operated by a monkey. Therefore, their inclination to learn about the computer is less because it just fades into the background.
I would guess that’s it’s a combination of what you mentioned and also the generation rasing it not bothering to actually teach them properly about that sort of stuff. I never learned about car stuff, never had anyone to teach me. Now as an adult I know enough to do the basic oil change stuff but nothing more.
Yes but unlike ChatGPT giving you made up answers, cars don’t drive you to 200 km away from where you wanted to go on their own. At least not yet.
Oh, that’s definitely happening when the five-years-away promise of fully self-driving vehicles as promised a decade ago make their appearance in 2050.
Unfortunately this generation google is getting less proficient at search as well. It’s like it treats the search term as a vague idea and any syntax as a non binding suggestion.
And many sites use seo to attract traffic but dont have any content you are actually looking for. And ads.
How do you demonstrate a hallucination?
Let it create a simple quizgame with easy question amd tell it to create some backround info on the correct answers.
It will claim the wrong answer correct and tell you the opposite in the backround info quickly
i can actually type slightly faster on a touchscreen keyboard, despite spending most of my time on my pc.
typing special characters is painfully slow on touch keyboards tho
This has actually been studied. Turns out, zoomers are so reliant on smart technology like tablets and phones, they never actually learned anything about normal PC file systems or extensions. They literally don’t understand what a folder is because they’ve never been exposed to PC or Mac environments.
I’ve seen people comment about needing to teach folder and file hierarchies to young people in CS classes because they grew up with cloud services and auto-save. Dunno how widespread that might be.
I’ve had to teach folders, file types and extensions to lots of ~18 yo. When I ask them where they saved a files they get confused and generally respond with something like “on the computer”.
Forget the 30 year old boomer, I present to you: the 18 year old boomer!
I am a sophomore computer science student and when I entered freshman year I was very surprised as well. Just last week, I was helping some kid with his intro C++ final and the entire semester, the guy has been saving everything to /downloads. He was wondering why every new program he made in Visual Studio failed to work. It kept messing up because he was in the same directory all the time messing about with the other 5 or so programs he made beforehand.
And there are lots who don’t understand what the shift key is for. They use capslock to shift…
Stop. You’re all hurting me.
There was a tech reviewer that scorched Chromebooks for taking away the CapLocks because… he couldn’t type capitals anymore!
I’m reminded of that infamous game reviewer that couldn’t figure out how to jump over a box on the first level of a tutorial. And then gave the game a bad review
I’ve observed this personally but I didn’t know it was studied. Can you provide a link to a study about it?
By study, I don’t mean in a lab setting, but more so the data has been collected by employers reporting that their Gen Z staff is technologically stunted.
https://futurism.com/gen-z-baffled-basic-technology
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
https://www.digitaldisrupting.com/gen-z-kids-apparently-dont-understand-how-file-systems-work/
I call bullshit on this post. Since Windows 10 you can just double click a zip file and it opens up like any other directory (even if it isn’t) and shows you the files.
If this zoomer wanted to open it they’d obviously double click.
So calm down boomers, this is fiction.
They may have emailed it to the zoomer, and the zoomer attempted to open it on their iphone or something that doesn’t have native zip compatibility.
If it’s an executeable with dependencies in the archive it might not run without being unpacked.
Can’t email executables.
Yes you can.
Outlook blocks it by default so if you allow exe’s to be emailed… you’re pretty stupid.
I don’t use software that imposes arbitrary restrictions on me for my “protection” and suggesting that this functionality is baked into email itself is just factually incorrect.
Good for you??
more like uhh… bad for everyone cause you presented false information as fact
That’s because all they know how to use are iPads. They don’t actually understand how real computers work.
Plus of course there is this attitude that if it doesn’t immediately work on its own you should give up and just pray to the nebulous entity that is “IT people”.
You wouldn’t believe how many people get annoyed that I don’t know what their password for something is.
It’s Chromebooks, phones, and tablets that you don’t ever have exposure to actual files. Chromebooks especially now that they’re so common in schools because they’re cheap.
I so wish Linux phones were actually a usable thing so that we could have functional pocket computers.
The attempts made so far weren’t very convincing.
We Millennials were born in a sweet spot where PCs were widespread enough to be virtually in every house since childhood but also not too streamlined and simplified.
We had a pc that sometimes didn’t work properly, we had to use the command line from time to time, troubleshoot and look up errors. When something fails we try to find out why and only after a while we give up and claim it’s an error or look for help.
Also you know, stupid people are in every generation.
Sample size of 1 person
ZOOMERS
Millenials are just passing on the abuse they got from the boomers for enjoying avocado toast 10 years ago.
At least making fun of someone’s tech skills is rather harmless compared to questioning the basic desire to eat something other than ramen every now and then.
I’m mostly afraid of these people will end up being teachers, mentors and managers for my future kids… I’ll need to do so much home schooling but at least that’ll hopefully only make me bond better with my kids.
I’m on the flip side. I know what a zip is and I can’t stand you using closed source suck-your-soul.
Sometimes I send .tar.zst’s on purpose to keep people on their feet. They need to stay up to date on their compression algorithms
I have yet to meet the braindead skibidy rizz zip file zoomers everyone keeps talking about. I assume I’ll find them with the latte avocado toast millennials.
I’ve met them. But I’ve also met tech illiterate millennials. And genius boomers.
I don’t have enough data to conclude yet, so options are open. I do believe zoomers use computers less than millennials do tho, in favor of smartphones.
Gen Z at uni here. Most of my fellow zoomers know what a zip file is. But some people just don’t computer that much so they simply don’t know.
However if you’re doing a computer job and you don’t know that’s ridiculous.
Some intro college CS courses have had to start teaching things like how folder structures work because enough students are missing that basic information.
We have gygabites of storage on our phones and on the cloud, it makes sense that zoomers don’t know what a zip file is. It’s like chastising me, an early millenial, because I don’t know Morse code.
Ridiculous take. Zip is used not just for compression but also for bundeling files. If you’ve used the internet beyond social media you’ve probably encountered a zip file. It’s just incompetence regardless of age.
They don’t know how to program in assembly because they don’t have to know. Same is true for WinRAR, rotary phones, stick shifts, and all the other cruft that prior generations had to deal with.
Hardship makes you hardy but reducing hardship is progress.
There are tech illiterate people in every generation, but they definitely seemed more prevalent in the boomer generation. In my experience it’s Boomers > Gen X > Zoomers > Millenials in terms of most to least technologically incompetent. Always suspected millennials are usually more comfortable with tech because they grew up with it, and it grew up with them.
For older generations, especially boomers, I figure they were more set in their ways and for many (but not all, obviously) it was hard to adapt. For Zoomers, I think it was just assumed that they’d just be inherently good so there were many things they were never actually taught (though many of them learned for themselves because they are nerds, which is pretty great if you ask me). Anyways, that’s my theory on generational tech literacy.
