I’ve worked with a lot of people from 4 different generations and Gen Z is *not* impressing me on the tech front.
Product managers spent the last 30 years making tech idiot-proof. You just don’t have to learn stuff if you don’t want to.
I’d join in on this conversation, but I’m support, so I’m currently working on my 78th ticket of the day while being yelled at on the phone because clicking and dragging is not “intuitive to the user”.
It is properly termed a keyboard clitoris, I blame the abandonment of such an elegant solution to the fundamental inability of half the planet to find it by feel alone.
As a product manager I also offer my greatest appreciation to my engineering brethren who suffer the slings and arrows of ill-defined problems, insufficient resources and accumulated technical debt for the betterment of us all.
As a product manager, I bow before the accomplishments of you, the high priests of Tufte and Norman.
Sadly you DO still need us to keep businesses investing in your work, for the universe keeps making bigger idiots.
It’s completely different from my college and my job. Millennials of course still hold up front of knowing computers the best, but for the most part Gen Z is pretty able to at least catch up and know what they’re doing pertaining to work. Well I’d say for the older crowd.
Have you ever had to teach teenagers how to format a document on Google Docs? Watched them type? Given them instructions for navigating file extensions and giving their documents names? It’s *rough* and has basically the same vibe as trying to teach my dad how to add an attachment to an email.
Omfg, my husband just shared your comment. It gave me fucking flashbacks. I don’t even know what OP’s post is about, lmao.
People think that since this generation has quick access to technology and google that they somehow know how to use it.
BS. These kids just know how to use apps that are already prebuilt.
I taught English for 11 years, and NOTHING mentally exhausted nor aggravated me as much as trying to teach them how to format a Google Doc and/or do a proper Google search. Not even teaching essays nor grading them!
Google’s own Applied Digital skill content isn’t that helpful. I guess it’s harder in a way because like math there are a sequence of steps that must be had.
After emails became the norm, I had to begin each school year with a 2 week mini unit on professional email writing.
Some of them would write their entire message in the subject. Some would not even include a subject. They would not only use poor grammar but they wouldn’t even tell me what assignment they were referring to. Some treated it like texting and would just send a block of aggravating text to read.
I also had to teach them what “business hours” and “business days” meant because they’d send the email at 8 that morning and asked if i had read it or answered them by 2nd period.
I soon stopped “complicated” Google Doc lessons and recorded those videos instead. I had a library of how-to videos in one part of our LMS.
I did do a lot of practice writing in Google Docs, and that helped them more than teaching them about numbering pages for MLA format.
My favorite thing I did was have them name their files with their name and assignment name. I’m currently in grad school for my English MA and am surprised by how many adults still don’t do that.
Ok, let me end this, lmao.
❤️ 🤗 Thanks for helping teachers like me be seen, lol.
My peeps! 🤗
The IT guys knew me because I was always bothering them. When YouTube was becoming mainstream, I kept badgering them to allow it. I was kinda like Andy from Shawshank Redemption.
They relented, lol.
My partner teaches high school biology, and even SHE had to teach the students not to put the entire 10+ sentence content of their email... IN THE SUBJECT LINE.
LOL. Thank her for me, seriously. ❤️ It's nice to hear of other subjects taking some time to teach real-world writing. You'd be surprised at how against it English teachers are, especially high school. I understand being zealous bibliophiles, but teaching overrated (usually suckyass) classics doesn't translate to real life, ya know? Admittedly, I've always been fonder of the composition side.
Interestingly, my district knew I was obtaining my masters in Curriculum & Instruction, and my district content coordinator asked if I'd like to get my feet wet and create a mini prof. dev. on my email unit, so it could be used more districtwide.
OMG, I cannot tell you how excited I was. JFC, the whines I got and "why" we gotta do this. Don't kids have phones? 🙄
Anyways, I am glad I did it, but it was surprising.
Haha, toodles! 🤗
Your services are indispensible for keeping civilisation propped up, for without those who teach, the world will simply devolve into monke
By the way, reading your comment reminded me of the luigi board video and the gregnant video... for some reason.
OMG!!! 🤣 I had never even *heard* of those videos. They were so hilarious! I always welcome a good laugh.
That brought back so many memories and the familiar cringe. I just can’t tolerate someone not clicking the fucking spell check. My kids knew how absolutely incredulous I’d get about it and the unprofessionalism of not using it.
I encouraged them to always help me spot my own typos, especially since we did a lot of “live writing.” I would give them reward tickets when they did.
*Holy shit*! Let me tell you; it turned them into vigilant editors who’d hunt for them on all handouts and since their own spelling sucked, they’d google the words to confirm their suspicions; it brought about good classroom banter.
What really surprised me was that they began doing it in *other* classes, lmao. I’ve received emails from colleagues in the past, stating that they don’t like the kids pointing out their errors.
Umm, sorry, *Mrs Adams,* but teachers aren’t above reproach and should use fucking spell check, too. While I never brought up that idea nor encouraged it, I never discouraged it.
Anyways, haha. That got me reminiscing and free writing. Thanks for your kind (and funny!) comment. 🤗
When I found out my 16 year old didn’t have an email account, or know how to get one, it floored me and left me a little disappointed in his generation as a whole. Then I had the joy of teaching my grandpa how to work a roku and I realized the kids are still miles ahead.
That Roku comment, lol. Adults are way more annoying to teach.
Yeah, it is disappointing. I worked at a 1:1 district, but the downside is that the kids get too many emails. A lot of them will shut down from seeing so many. I gave up having them organize it (like their Google Drive, lol). However, we would get them set up to have their teacher emails added to their Google contacts and starred when they received it.
Honestly though, the improvement vs. hellish effort was so imbalanced. I think this is where something like a scaled down Bard A.I. would be so revolutionizing for classrooms. Just to have AI "prompt" them and review their papers and give feedback, even if it's capped 3 times per day.
I had Bard write and submit a ton of feedback/suggestions for me, lol.
Anyways, toodles! ❤️
I need to know what type of teenagers you’re around because my 17 year old brother knows how to do these things perfectly and I’ve been using Google docs in Microsoft Word since I was 8 alongside my other younger brother. Even the High-school I went to the so-called “dumb kids” still knew how to easily access a PowerPoint. I still remember the days that I had to even use a USB drive to save my book reports online for my teacher lol. Typing though, I feel different. I’d say I’ve met people who typed way faster than me alongside the T-Rex hands equally give great and horrible work lol.
That’s normal. You want to start people at the same spot so that less experienced students don’t start the class having to catch up.
Every ML class I take always starts by reviewing linear and probability, just like how every upper level math class I’ve taken still covers simple topics like real numbers and modulo.
Computer science students in college, who the commenter you are responding to is referring to, should have basic knowledge of how to navigate file explorer.
Umm no. My very first computer science class freshman year taught me principles of object oriented programming and introduced me to java, not how to open a file in Windows. That's crazy.
That’s still the case today, they start u off in OO languages, nothing has changed from y’all’s generation to now. It’s a blatant lie that they have to teach basic computer stuff to cs students let alone any college student. You either know it already, learn it yourself, or gtfo.
Source: studying CS in college right now
People really are fighting hard to live in the fantasy world where 16 year olds don’t know how to save a word document as a PDF. Like I’m 25 and in gen z. At most I just didn’t know I could save a page as a pdf by printing it and selecting PDF as a printer.
Like I’ve worked with teens and I don’t know why people are pretending they don’t get forced to do MLA formatted sources or whatever it is now for papers. They know how to save a template to avoid doing more work later cause that’s how laziness works with teenagers. They work hard to avoid working hard.
Why’re people actively pretending like they don’t just talk to stupid teenagers? Cause whoever they know that majors in anything involving computers that doesn’t know how to navigate file explorer by the time they’re in college is just stupid. They aren’t the average person, they’re stupid.
Rough is an understatement. I was an adjunct at a community college and one of my classes was a dual-enrollment course on what was basically Microsoft Office. I originally thought it was going to be a waste of everyone’s time (given how the G Suite mimics it) and was a fluff course the school had built in for an easy A.
It was not
The biggest surprise to me was that they didn’t know how to email themselves documents. I once spent 45 minutes showing them how to send an email to themselves with attachments. But I couldn’t really be mad because at least they took the initiative to learn a skill they knew they’d need.
I've been teaching computer courses at the college level since 2015. This fall I'll be adding a 1-day file-management unit to my courses because it's becoming frustrating getting "project1.pdf.pdf" or "project2(1)(1)(1).pdf" turned in, or seeing a student go to their desktop and have 1000+ files all stacked on top of each other.
I hear you. The absolute bane of my teaching life is that Google Docs allows “Untitled Document” to remain the default file name for docs. I start all my classes very similarly: creating a folder for all their classes in Drive, how to format titles, etc. It’s frustrating, but I’m hoping most of them continue to use the skills outside my class.
Just because Google Docs allows them to name the file that doesn't mean you have to accept that as the turned-in file name. If a student sends me a file without their name as part of the file (i.e. jdoe\_project1.pdf or jdoe\_project1.zip) I email them back and have them re-send it to me with the correct name. For some projects, that can mean they also have to go in and re-link files, which they wouldn't have to do if they named it correctly in the first place.
Hell, we have 20-somethings, 30-somethings and 40-somethings all say the same stupid shit in an office setting: "derp, I'm not good with computers, hahahahah!"
MF'er, you had a computer in EVERY CLASSROOM from Kindergarten on, if you can't make a new Word doc and save to a specific folder, WTF are you doing working in an office?
I totally agree with this! I regularly see my younger brother (teens) use the speech-to-text function on his iPhone if he doesn't know how to spell a word.
I would say that it's definitely true for Gen Z in most parts of africa as compared to millenials who had to learn everything sitting in cybercafes for hours everyday after school just for fun to learn. Today they barely exist anymore because everyone has a smartphone. I just don't get how they are so savvy about navigating around social media (and even then... they wouldn't be able to sponsor a post for example on their own) but are absolutely unable to export a Google Docs or reinitialize the password of their email adress.
You're explaining how to set the idle on a 4 barrel Holley carb to people who learned to drive in dad's Tesla.
And I say that as a 58 year old in tech who was literally chatting with some college buddies earlier today about writing a program on punched card terminals.
Oh lord lol you’re reminding me of the time I mentioned one day in class that I learned how to drive on a tractor, and it was almost immediate chaos.
But yeah, I hear you. I feel like these skills should already be taught and reinforced before they get to high school, but it is what it is.
Unrelated, but I miss those dot matrix printers. I loved pulling the margins off of papers and the ink smelled so good!
The computer center in college had the massive band printers and there were literally linear feet of 11" wide continuous paper. We got about 4 boxes of old printouts once and pulled it out and wadded it up to fill a friend's entire grad student office floor to ceiling in paper. Poor man took FOREVER to clean it up.
I had an intern work under me as an electrical engineer. I'm mid millennial and he is mid gen z. He couldn't even manage to figure out the file explorer when I needed him to pull up drawings. He didn't even know there was a search function for things on windows.
Kids are falling in the same tracks my parents are. No need to learn how to do things, as long as someone streamlines the UI. They can click their way through most things, but I see how bad they are.
As a PM, we have a bunch of research on this and you’re pretty much right. The phrase “tech literate” has changed over the years from “I understand how this system works” to “I can use software to do a certain set of things”.
And the reason is older generations like millennials had to understand how the system works to some degree to use it. The idiot proofing has made it so that that’s no longer required or learned.
I do the IT presentation for new-employee orientation at my company and I've had probably six people over the last year who didn't know how to capitalize a letter using a standard laptop keyboard. They've all been Gen Z. The lack of PC usage of this generation, combined with an inability to troubleshoot basic issues, has led me to side with you. They've never had to troubleshoot, so they simply don't know how.
I imagine a lot of this is because they've never had to type stuff in on a physical keyboard. They've been doing everything on their phones.
Just as an aging tech nerd, I'm getting chills down my spine thinking about how in 20 years or so, keyboards will likely be the purview of the elderly and insane.
My 13 year old nephew wanted a gaming pc, and since I’m an enthusiast, I had enough spare parts to make him an awesome one with glass, rgb and the works.
I give it to him and he has NO idea on how to use it except for launching games and opening chrome.
A year later he still calls me when he wants to install games..
Because most CS students don't take network administration. Why would they? They are becoming software engineers.
I'm a 50-year-old software engineer, and I would have to google how to do that on modern Windows. I haven't had to deal with any of that stuff since the early 2000's, because technology has improved since then. Unless you are a network admin, there's not much call for that knowledge.
On the other hand, when I was teaching I had intro Freshmen students (gen-Z) hand-writing neural networks in C++.
Perhaps they just haven’t learned the art of Googling things before letting the higher ups know. There’s a lot of basic stuff people miss in from college curriculums.
Computer science it theory and you’re an asshole. Not everyone takes networking classes and not every school offers them. I’ve been in the industry ten years and I learned networking when I needed to on the job. As a mentor it’s your job to provide the assistance needed to deliver. They’re expected not to be perfect. This honestly is more your failure than hers and you should learn how to develop your hires instead of mock them.
i don’t think anything fills me with more rage than seeing an email 5-6 minutes before i planned to log off, copying damn near everyone in the whole organization with some stupid fucking suggestion, that they’d know was a bad idea if they gave it just a little bit more thought.
Well, there goes your job security right there. As long as there exist people who suck at tasks, then there will always be a need for others who specialize in that task to help them.
That is, as long as there exist limitations on the hand holding that ai can do.
People always sound dumb to me when they complain about kids not being able to what they used to, while also complaining they can’t figure out how to do the things kids are doing
For real. It's simply a different generation, and technology constantly keeps advancing and evolving. *Why* would the kids still do things the "old way" if theirs is easier and more efficient now?
Wait, isn't GenZ in their mid to late 20s? There is no way they don't know how to do that.
My kid's 10, and he knows how to look through files, download email attachments and unzip files.
Admittedly, he's growing up in a tech family (my husband is a software engineer), and he's programming little games and mod packs for Minecraft and Roblox with his buddies, so he has a deeper interest in that shit due to necessity.
Still, there are YouTube tutorials for literally everything, even how to download an email attachment, which is how my son figures this stuff out.
That's why. Stuff that seems easy to us technically inclined is only because we've been exposed to it for so long. Ask the average teenager nowadays what a modem or router does and they'll have no idea.
I'm gonna be honest. If someone asked me what a modem or router does, I wouldn't be able to answer with more than "Uh, it sends and receives signals so I can use the internet...?", and I'm in my fucking 40s, lol.
Actually, I could regale them with some anecdotes from yesteryear, about the shrieking noise the dial-up modems used to make before connecting. That should garner me *some* points! 😆
I was recently training a recent college grad and she didn't know how to do anything. She didn't understand the file system navigation for PPT, or even basic things with Chrome. I asked if she was used to a Mac and she said no. I honestly don't know how she got through college without this knowledge.
Using a mouse?!? But...that's so much easier and more intuitive than a touch pad! I don't understand!
Or, maybe I just don't know how to use a laptop without a mouse properly, let alone a Mac book. 🤷♀️
I can tell you as someone who (briefly) worked as a science teacher that kids in the 12 to 14 age range that I taught were, for the most part, terrible with *actual tech literacy*. They can open apps and navigate just fine on a phone interface, but the idea of attachments, extracting files, installing programs that aren’t conveniently click-and-go from an AppStore etc stumps them. We taught them this, and they learn it quick, but even all the way up to the older Gen Zers in their twenties there’s a sharp delineation point between one’s who grew up at a time where you had to know how a computer worked to use it, and one’s who have pretty much only ever used tech that is incredibly intuitive and self explanatory. This isn’t a failing or anything like that on their part, it’s just really fascinating to see the sharp difference. The kids who did the best with tech were either from tech households, or the kids who played games on their PC and so understood some of the basic commands of navigating folders and installing programs.
I'm one of those stubborn people who searches their computer for 10 minutes, for a specific file or function, and it's my son who asks "Why don't you just type it in the search bar...?" like I'm an idiot. I mean, I guess I kinda am in this instance, lol.
On one hand, the stories in this thread are blowing my mind, considering how terminally online so many young people are. But, I guess most of that is just social media, which is done primarily on their phones, so it doesn't seen as unbelievable anymore.
I was just going by the birth years the internet gave me, which was 1996-2010.
Don't worry, the labels really mean shit-all. I'm Gen-X and everybody forgets we even ever existed, lol.
I teach high school students. I can absolutely confirm that they don't know how to do that. I'm honestly shocked at the lack of computer knowledge of some of these kids. I once had a class of 32 students where I had to show almost the entire class how to name a folder and move a document into it. It wasn't enough to just describe it either. I had to walk around to each table and actually confirm or even point out where to click for the entire group to be able to do it. A few of them knew how to do it, the vast majority had no clue. I honestly think their lack of computer knowledge might become an issue in a few years.
It's an actual honest to god problem office workers are encountering now. I'm early 30's, and my little brothers are mid 20s. They grew up basically without computers and entirely on phones/tablets.
Your son knows how because of how he's being raised, the only people I know that own PCs are basically gamers at this point.
The reason you teach the "old way" is because the founding principles of the old way are what built the new way.
You learn the fundamentals so you have more tools to understand and navigate the complexities.
Do I need to manually type in IP addresses for content on the internet anymore? No but it is certainly beneficial to know that IP address and DNS servers are still a real thing that affect me everytime I surf the web.
Unless you can figure out the things kids do because it's very basic, and the things kids can't do are very basic.
I took a computer applications course to fill out some elective credits when I went back to school. It was very rudimentary intro to navigating Microsoft windows, word, excel, PowerPoint. Every fucking person in that class seemed like it was their first time using a computer. It's because as applications move more and more towards "user friendly", they take away a lot of the figuring stuff out portion of computer work. It was honestly mind blowing, before that I assumed younger folks would be MORE tech savvy, not less. But they know how to operate an iphone, so I guess they have that going for them.
This is kind of correct. I could whup genz (even most millienials) butt at addressing serious issues in Windows, Linux, macOS -- both on the OS itself and software that runs on it. When it comes to doing heavy stuff on the phone, I'm clearly a touch slow using apps. I'm perfectly capable, but sometimes there's a feature I have trouble finding or seeing the UI component for.
*However,* this is literally me refusing to invest in doing certain tasks on my phone when I'd rather do them on a PC. Basic example is filling out a complex form. Keyboard and mouse on my PC is greatly comforting when I need to place an online order after a website sign up. Can I do it on my phone? Yes. But goodness is it slow and annoying. I can do the same on a PC twice as fast, while multiltasking YouTube learning video, and building code or configuring my text editor.
Those of us that are very fluent computer users understand that new devices are capable of a lot in the hardware, but we are jaded that utilities that are locked behind paid, ad-packed, tracking, and/or subscriptions apps that force you to give away your data (kudos to Apple for taking a half step to address this). I don't need to send messages and basic digital images and video through some new app and sign up for more new bullshit. I keep my eyes on the prize: what is the app doing to serve me or enhance my life? Not "what keeps me up with the trendz." Apps like Snapchat, IG, Vine, and TikTok are not advancements in technology. Sure, the algorithm that serves you better content was the advancement, but for you the only improvement was lower effort finding entertaining stuff that is related to stuff you consumed before. I'm still on YouTube where I proactively search out specific topics to continue to educate myself on things not learned. Of course I consume entertainment there too. If and when a new app comes out that serves that purpose better, I'm all for it and will easily learn it.
Until then. I don't give a shit that I don't efficiently post IG or TikTok content. Kids can laugh all they want. I lament that their skills has nothing more than social validation that probably doesn't even carry over to their IRL interactions.
Well I’d generally agree with you but knowing how to use a computer is actually important for most jobs. We really aren’t at the “who even uses a computer anymore” stage in the timeline. Not even close.
my personal experiences:
21 year old during our training: "how do i update chrome, i hate this technology shit!!"
me trying to help someone with their word doc: where did you save the file to?
17 year old: "i don't know where it goes when you save."
I've had similar experiences in my professional life.
Had some interns a few years ago, all of them programming students. They really knew their stuff when it came to structuring code and using githib, but more than one I had to explain the hierarchical structure of a file system, how to 'cd' to another directory, and why would this command work in directory X but not Y.
I can see why they didn't know something so 'basic' (to an IT worker for over a decade). Being raised on phones and tablets would do that.
Still it was a shock!
As a 23 year old who's basically obsessed with technology (got the CompTIA A+ certification earlier this year), I feel like there's multiple factors at play there.
In high school here in Houston we were all given actual school laptops to use for schoolwork and homework, not the Chromebooks that apparently have become more prevalent.
Because of this the laptop form factor is also more accessible to newer computer users. Non tech people aren't gonna know that desktop hardware is infinitely more powerful than laptop hardware.
I think because a lot of younger people are also increasingly using Apple products, they get to Windows later on and are like "WTF am I looking at???"
I mean Mac's early slogans included one of "It just works"
Casual Mac users aren't using the full power of Apple silicon, but there are casual PC gamers that do that with their Intel or AMD chips and dedicated graphics cards.
There are multiple PC system integrators that will just build your computer for you, while on Apple you're just getting a Mac with this much ram at this price.
PC and Mac have analogous features but the have different names, making it difficult to switch even though Microsoft has started adopting some Apple schtick.
ChromeOS is just different stuff entirely.
That's just how it is, I know people who have used computers of both major OS damn near every single day for decades and still need help for things.
The casual or uninformed users face the impossible task of attempting to harness the ever increasing power of technology.
I like this explanation, or at least it feels more relevant to me. I’m 39 now, but in my mid to late 20s and early 30s I got into building my own PCs for a little while (being broke was a great motivator at the time), even though I was using Mac based hardware for my jobs at the time.
When I got into the blue collar workforce and became more hands on I’ve definitely lost some of the “feel” that you need to navigate constantly changing technology - I’m no longer interacting with it on a daily basis so that muscle has gotten substantially weaker. Ironically, I got my brother into building PCs, and now when he mentions graphic cards/motherboards etc, I’m simply like “I have no fucking clue what any of this means but have a blast”.
As I make more money now I’m lazy as shit and just use software that dumbs everything down for you, but I’m still *light years* ahead of the old fucks at my job, who think I’m some tech guru. I don’t know shit anymore.
I also think that with the advent of smartphones and their widespread use, dedicated computers are becoming kinda secondary.
Smartphones can do a lot of what a computer can do, and some like Samsung can even be turned into a computer like experience with things like DeX.
Tablets are replacing computers as well, moreso on the Apple side with iPads being advertised as laptop replacements.
Outside of PC gamers that are in the know or tech enthusiasts, the amount of people building their own computer is still relatively small I think.
I haven't actually built one yet, but I've worked inside of a few and it's what made me decide to get the A+ cert to try and find a job doing it.
I am also in the same camp of thinking I don't know shit, but knowing way more than the people around me lol. I'm the resident IT guy for basically everyone I know.
Yeah this has been my experience when I helped people at work with tech stuff. Younger peeps are more geared towards phones and tablets.
Often I had to show people 10+ years younger than me how to do basic shit on a computer like using the fucking Start menu.
Gen Z definitely parallels boomers with the tech illiteracy. Although it's not because tech is difficult and complex anymore (stuff boomers dealt with), it's because tech is easy and accessible you don't really need to "know" it, so to speak
I have graduating seniors in CS/IT unable to do things that are integral to their field. Queue old man voice: " back in my day". You HAD to understand everything in order to do anything. That barrier meant that in order to get anything real done required more self directed work and a genuine interest in how things worked. Countless hours tinkering on your own. Sooo many students have gone into the field with the mistaken assumption that computer jobs will be easy and navigate their curriculum to find the professors that are "easy" or easy to cheat with. Its not necessarily a Gen Z thing. Its that since computers are more accessible more people are avle to pass by without the knowledge needed to excel. And instructors can no longer rely on that niche population that is already self taught to do their job.
Now that all said. When I really push them to do more than the basics for their senior projects. Most of them are able to step up, dig deep, and get some really impressive projects done.
We can't rely on the self selection of the field anymore. We need yo adapt to how we teach. Quite frankly we should have changed a looong time ago.
My wife teaches middle school and she said her students didn’t know how to do things like attach a file to an email or save things to a specific folder but she also said it’s because they use google drive for basically everything so they haven’t need to learn how to do those things.
Google is more relevant. To most middle and high schoolers ChromeOS is the operating system they know best. ChromeOS has no real file system and abstracts away most local computing to seamless internet browsing.
Mac OS has a file system and fairly transparent relationships with applications.
Kids were writing papers on their phones when I was in high school 13 years ago. They are absolutely still doing that now that the screens are twice as large.
Graduated HS in 2021, in college rn. Writing reports on phones is a giant fucking hassle. Switching between apps/tabs is slow, the keyboard is cramped, tiny screen in comparison to monitor makes it uncomfortable (and I have a massive phone), and submitting stuff can be annoying depending on how it needed to be submitted. I dont know a single person that preferred writing papers on their phones. Everyone only used them when there were no other options.
I have Google docs on my phone. I can (and have) written the bulk of several university essays on my phone and then proofread them later on my PC. Not because I prefer it, but because I'm not always at my desk. I do always have my phone on me.
My knee-jerk reaction to this was "Well, that's fucking stupid of them! Typing on a laptop/PC with a large keyboard is so much easier and faster!"
But, could it be that some kids can't afford a laptop, whereas phones are considered a basic necessity nowadays, and "cheaper" with a plan, maybe?
In that case I could understand them doing it that way.
They are absolutely not doing that. Have you ever tried writing a lab report or making a powerpoint presentation on your phone? There's not a single soul I know that was choose to do assignments on their phone over paper or PC. This is coming from a current high school student. Writing documents on mobile is buggy, slow, and all the options that are 2 keystrokes away on a laptop are hidden behind 4 menus on your phone.
There are a few keywords you put in your comment- "when I was in high school 13 years ago"- that tell me you can't speak for anybody currently in high school. My peers only use their phone for assignments when they have no other options.
As someone that's worked on a University campus for over half a decade, kids are absolutely doing papers and discussion board postings on their phones. We just had this conversation in a meeting this morning. I'm not saying it's what I'd do, or that it's very efficient, but they are absolutely doing it.
I mean, there's probably a lot of variables that go into it- I've been exposed to public Elementary schools and High schools in Canada where doing an assignment on your phone is practically unheard of. University and College might be different, but I don't have the perspective to speak on behalf of that. As I read more of this thread, there seems to be more division between Adult Gen Z and Teen Gen Z than I thought.
> They are absolutely not doing that. Have you ever tried writing a lab report or making a powerpoint presentation on your phone?
I see that somebody never procrastinated on their project and needed to finish by the time you got to campus....
I couldn't tell if the bus was shaking or if I was shaking but I ended up getting a 65 something on the social assignment and a 90 on the chem assignment. All's well that ends well!
My statement still stands, lab reports are done in simple word documents- I didn't really think I needed to give more than two examples since you gave one yourself, but go off.
I had a support case I to deal with where an executive at the company had spent an hour making suggestions to a report all through the iOS OneDrive mobile app for an hour. Depending on the app you can do quite a bit. Now I wouldn’t want to write a lab report on mobile but apparently some do.
Gen Z kids are not writing GOOD school reports on phones.
It’s a huge pain in the ass to write a report on a phone. A lot of high schoolers are given free chrome books to write reports by the school, a system that was not in place 13 years ago when you were in highschool.
They absolutely are. I graded tons of college assignments while doing my PhD, and it was not at all uncommon. Most use tablets or laptops, but still plenty used their phones for everything. It was wild
Why don't we help them be better with computers then? ( Although by Gen Z I think you mean like early twenties and high schoolers so that's why I'm like teach the babies(
Yes, I can understand younger Gen Z like children. However, for the most part me and my brothers, knowing the youngest is going to be an adult this year know how to fully use computers.
Yes I see the kids at work and they can use their little school laptops so I just thought they were fine because there's a lot of millennials who only have basic skills
I 100% agree it also goes for Millennials and pretty much everybody that the average person is only looking for a computer to access basic skills which is fine. It’s still determines that you know how to use a computer. People in the comments are over here talking about “Oh my gosh you can’t access your IP address, burn files, change and break apart your CD-ROM😳?” Newsflash, most people with computers are not doing that.
We’re suppose to blame the younger generations and act like our clearly archaic education system isn’t the problem. We send kids to education factory that’s out dated on many fronts then blame them for not having skills they don’t teach in school generally. Don’t teach useful knowledge a lot of the time like anything finance related or any skills that may be applicable in the work force. Shit is useless outside of teaching people specific sciences, your states white washed history, math, and English.
I’m in school with gen z and here what I got from them.
Nobody takes notes. Writing or on the Computer
-90% of them can’t type on a computer… at all. Like just index finger typing
- no imagination what so ever. Was going to school for graphic design in illustrator class kids just kept getting caught literally just taking some video game artwork and turning it in.
- html css class kid got his roommate to make him a spider man webpage which looked like it came straight out of Wordpress or wix
- everyone loves Kpop and I’m just like it’s literal black samples 90s music with people that don’t even like black people at all.
oh yea they trash at dancing. All them years of doing TikTok videos and only dancing to lyrics not moving there feet at all really took a toll 😂
Yea but that’s my point ironically creativity is kinda lacking but it’s not their fault cause so much technology and content. But I really shouldn’t judge cause millennials are def worst off
Part of the issue for Gen Z and A are that they never have to bored now, and that's the time to grow creativity. Most of their schools also defunded and devalued the arts, and just taught how to take a test. That's a bad mix for creativity.
> it’s literal black samples 90s music with people that don’t even like black people at all.
In Korea, clubs in Itaewon or Gangnam will be playing Saweetie, Doja, Drake or a bunch of other black artists and turn away black tourists at the same time.
Aight but... If kids are really generating whole ass reports with AI and are incapable of actually producing them on like... A word processing app, like typing them up in Microsoft Word? I'll admit to being concerned. That goes beyond tech literacy that's just the literal bare minimum
I feel like this is just a natural progression of things. Tech became easier to use for convenience, which isn't a bad thing. But I do feel like some things were lost with it. The days where getting setting up a new computer involved installing software, loading drivers, manually setting up network connections. It was a bit of a hassle but you learned something during the process.
Also due to capitalism tech companies have made it harder to work on your own devices. The days of let's just open it up and see what's inside seem to be gone, because they'd rather seal it shut and have you buy a new one.
Teacher here. Gen Z (aside from gamers) have no clue how to operate a computer. It is actually shocking. But the pc gamers know more about computers than me!
Computers are like cars. Just because you know how to drive one does *not* mean you know how to fix one and *especially* doesn't mean you know how to make one.
If you’re talking to teenagers that don’t know how to name files that’s just a stupid kid. Stupid people exist. Thinking everyone is stupid because those people were stupid is weird.
I’ve worked with teenagers. If you know a teenager that doesn’t know how to rename a file, that is not the average teenager. That is a stupid teenager.
I’m 25 and part of gen z. High school wasn’t that long ago and even using Google drive they’d have to rename files at some point. If they can’t understand how right clicking to open a new tab on their browser like they do when downloading mods for games while not losing the page, they can understand how to right click for more options.
Again, if they aren’t able to do that, it’s not a sign that gen z is tech illiterate. It’s a sign that you’re for some reason interacting with only tech illiterate people. Maybe look into where you are or who you’re talking too that doesn’t know these basic things before moving to the only reason is cause their whole generation is tech illiterate.
Sometimes kids never have access to computers and only have had the internet over a phone so yes they type papers on their phone and don’t know about file explorer.
Every time my son wants to know something he just asks Siri. I tried showing him how google search works and I could just read his face internally saying “wtf… why type out a search, filter results, and then read answers when I can just talk to Siri and get the same thing”
Kids these days cant google things
Kids these days cant look things up in a library
Kids these days are fine sharing water fountains with *those* people
Kids these days cant forge a horseshoe anymore
Kids these days cant take down a wolly mammoth for the pride of their tribe
I work with a fair number of gen z, and they often have real trouble with basic things like understanding folder structure, creating Boolean search strings, and really struggle to interact with even basic office or browser software. The design choices that apple has made (that google and others have copied) have robbed them of the ability to tinker with the tools they will have to use the rest of their working lives
I'm in my 40's when I tell kids what I used to have to do to online game in the mid 90's as a teen or the process to get a sound card to work on a PC game in DOS they think I'm outright lying to them.
Good old Soundblaster. And yeah I still remember doing things like creating boot disks and manipulating IRQ settings even though I really didn't have a clue what they did.
Technology is too intuitive at this point for kids to really have the ability to work through it with patience. Take this with a grain of salt but I read one article a few years back saying that gen-x tends to be the best generation as a whole to navigate technology due to starting with such crude technology and adapting along the way. Who knows if it’s true but I can make sense of it.
I haven’t noticed tech illiteracy but boy howdy do I see a lot of Gen Z who just simply cannot type on a keyboard. I’m talking full boomer two index finger hunt-and-peck from recent college grads
That’s actually odd and I have thought the opposite about Gen Z tbh. As a millennial who literally grew up through a lot of technological transitioning, I was fortunate to be able to learn how to use and interact with a lot of the new technology, so it’s pretty second nature to me. Gen Z practically leaves the womb with an iPhone so you’d think that’d translate to an easier time with modern day tech because of an earlier exposure to it. Smart phones really out here making folks dumb.
The transition from analogue to digital did a lot in making us tech literate. A lot of the edges are smoothed down now, you don't *have* to learn tech to use it.
A lot of millennials grew up having to give themselves the resources required to be tech literate. No need for us to start being boomers about it simply because the next generation is taking tech resources for granted. We (millennials) shouldn’t let the pride of what we gave ourselves get in the way of figuring out constructive ways to pass it on to the next generation. Not all of us are born to be role models, leaders, or mentors, I get that. But let’s just keep our position in the generational matrix in mind. Gen Z feels like our annoying cousins who asked “if our phones have games on them”, because that’s literally who they are. If you don’t have the patience, that’s cool, but don’t pretend you wouldn’t love the opportunity to have been taught technology versus wading through the trenches solo.
Maybe the basic tasks, but every person - my age, older, younger - does not know how to navigate through files. I've even seem some not know how to install an adblock, which I find surprising
I feel like people are arguing tech literate vs computer literate. Compared to the 90’s and 00’s there’s just less capital C desktop Computers around nowadays. Probably also doubly so for poor families. Additionally adults on margin probably don’t need to use a desktop computer to run their lives outside of work. Most banks, insurance, bookings all have apps you can use.
I think on net people just understand OS’s less intuitively now i.e file systems, programs, network etc. since most of this is abstracted away on mobile + wires disappear.
They also probably don’t use the much more configurable/detailed desktop applications and websites. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t even use websites if they don’t have to.
I’m also not surprised about the typing skills. They’re not as emphasized in school anymore and I’m a 30yr old senior software engineer who couldn’t touch type until maybe 3 years ago.
However until the new tech paradigms become standardized and can be used to configure/troubleshoot the computers they’re running on. Idk if you can describe them as tech literate; maybe mobile literate?
Umm... I use a cli daily, and yes, tech literacy does include having to use a command line to pass commands, there's literally no way around that. What is this tweet talking about?
a lot of my friends my age wouldn’t even know how to install a program onto their windows PCs. it’s basically just a chromebook to them. i remember i one time had to talk a friend step by step on how to install steam ffs.
Having worked with K-12, and now college students, there is a definite decline in technical know-how, not literacy.
But you also have to realize that, from say 1983 to 2003, the technology changed drastically and frequently. In that same time span, 2003 to 2023, technology for sure improves, but it is not as drastic. An iPhone that came out in 2007, at it's most basic, works just like an iPhone that will come out this year. Press a box on a screen and it does stuff.
So when the tech they are facing doesn't work exactly like they think it should, that's when the younger generations struggle.
There's 3 stages of Tech for most of us.
1. The stuff that's always been there that you don't recognise as Tech
2 The funky stuff released between childhood and middle age.
3. The useless crap that kids are into.
My dad made sure we had all new Tech. First to have a phone in the house, a colour TV, stereo, video player, remote controls. I have the Sinclair ZX81 on my shelf. He once took me into the computer where he worked showing me what a Babbage card can do.
I had friends in the 90s that laughed at me for getting dialup Internet in my house and leaving my kids to play with it. I made sure they got tablets mobile phones, smartphones, laptops. I did place very strict limits on games.
The sad thing is now. I meet kids who's parents can't support the stage 1 Tech and there's a huge number of GZ getting left behind. We must do all we can to ensure all get to embrace the change.
I teach technology in middle school.
The kids don't know how to use computers. They understand other kinds of tech. So we teach them the new stuff and relate it to the stuff they get, and they're okay.
Yeah I think people overestimate how tech literate younger generationns are. They know how to use apps which is fine but those are specifically designed to be easy to use. I remember in highschool i had to teach a classmate how to use microsoft word of all things.
I find it... A little funny how class dynamics/poverty isn't really being mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if kids are writing essays from their phones because... Hey, you can write on them, and people around the world are more likely to own a cell phone than a home computer. If someone learns to Twitter finger out an essay because they can't afford a laptop, I don't want to talk shit. Also, in some parts of Africa and other parts of the world, there are large swaths of people who live in a smart phone culture but never really had PCs as a cultural norm back in the 90s/2000s.
What is interesting though is how it's not great for programming or computer science. It's damned near impossible to write code well on a smartphone. So while gen z might know how to use technology-including social use (I have no idea how to run a social media marketing business but some 14 year old Twitter stans can)- id like to hear how they handle trying to script in python or debug something. I've also heard some African computer scientists and programming educators talk about the gap, especially when everyone using an iPhone/android but not writing a single line of Swift (or Kotlin or w/e) means a dependency on technology from other parts of the world rather than developing a strong base of white collar industry in their countries.
Is knowing how to type properly important? I don’t know. But the true (not cusp) Gen Zs didn’t learn it in school.
Same with cursive— can’t write it or read it. Is it important? I don’t know. But they didn’t learn it in school.
Making change without the register telling you what the answer is? Must not have that on a standardized test, which is all they get to do in school anymore.
It is great that technology is more accessible. But it is also sometimes like my boomer parents and my Gen Z niblings are the same people. It’s not fair to the younger kids— cursive is great for fine motor skills, correct typing is great for your wrist and back health, being able to figure out adding and subtracting is great because humans figured that out a loooooooong time ago. Also, these kids have had a magic device that can tell you ANYTHING and if they don’t know how to do something— they don’t even think to look it up. It’s just a 🤷♀️ and move on to something else easier. Why have we robbed kids of curiosity?
It’s not on the teachers either. Admin, parents, college admissions teams need to set kids up to have a more well-rounded liberal arts education at a younger age. It literally improves STEM fields (math and music! So many studies how one positively impacts the other!), helps kids’ mental health to have creative outlets (and they need help with mental health.) Bring back recess, gym, physical outlets for energy. 8 hour quiet robot attention spans are not developmentally possible for kids and we punish the day dreamers as much as the disruptive ones. Why?
It’s tough being a kid in the age of the internet) and standardized tests are trash for assessing what people actually know, have mastered and can do, especially in elementary and high school. And I say that as someone with 3 degrees and am in school for a 4th. Parents/family should be enforcing screen limits and making sure their kids can actually read and comprehend age appropriate materials. If you don’t learn HOW to learn at a young age, you’re climbing up the mountain barefoot for the rest of your life.
If you think they’re bad at emails and word documents you should see them try and use excel.
Like watching a room full of kittens try to type out Shakespeare.
I taught gen Z in a field that required computer knowledge and they predominantly did not know how to use PCs. Even things like saving to the cloud was confusing to them. Devices being idiot proof just means people are ignorant of how they really work.
It is kinda interesting. As an elder millennial computer tech is so engrained that seeing younger adults come in to my work with very poor computer skills is a bit surprising. I guess they would run circles around me on a phone.
This is a kind of a myth. I work at a high school and those kids don’t understand computer fundamentals AT ALL. It’s just assumed they do. They’ll press on the power button like a woodpecker on a tree and don’t know what the Caps Lock button does. They just learn as they go.
This makes me feel old, man.
We’re in a bit of a transition period with technology in general.
My college aged employees do know less but that’s simply because they don’t have a reason to learn much as tech improves; however, they have been fast studies, and it’s a lot easier to explain how to use data management tools and to teach things like how to flash a bios than it is for a 35 year old with the same amount of info.
I teach high school and Gen Z are NOT computer literate. Sure, they know how to use apps like Tik Tok, IG, SnapChat, and a few know What’s App (we are in the US) but that’s about it. Some have learned a few computer based apps like Canva due to online school.
I’ve worked with a lot of people from 4 different generations and Gen Z is *not* impressing me on the tech front. Product managers spent the last 30 years making tech idiot-proof. You just don’t have to learn stuff if you don’t want to.
_Product managers_ made tech idiot-proof?! Ex-fucking-cuse me and my UX career
Product managers are still taking credit for shit all the time. I'm with you in arms as an engineer.
I’d join in on this conversation, but I’m support, so I’m currently working on my 78th ticket of the day while being yelled at on the phone because clicking and dragging is not “intuitive to the user”.
Touchpad click-and-drag is a PITA
I mean, if they are using freaking ThinkPad nipple mice maybe.... Wtf
It is properly termed a keyboard clitoris, I blame the abandonment of such an elegant solution to the fundamental inability of half the planet to find it by feel alone.
Product Manager here. https://preview.redd.it/o2ngfg2j1ddb1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7eadff4357b09964d015a5df84045f186194dc21
As a product manager I also offer my greatest appreciation to my engineering brethren who suffer the slings and arrows of ill-defined problems, insufficient resources and accumulated technical debt for the betterment of us all.
As a product manager, I bow before the accomplishments of you, the high priests of Tufte and Norman. Sadly you DO still need us to keep businesses investing in your work, for the universe keeps making bigger idiots.
UX makes pretty pictures that engineers actually get to work properly.
UX determines FLOWS. UI makes those flows pretty.
Let's just we helped and call it even.
That’s a good thing, the goal is to make tech usable to the widest range of audiences.
It’s completely different from my college and my job. Millennials of course still hold up front of knowing computers the best, but for the most part Gen Z is pretty able to at least catch up and know what they’re doing pertaining to work. Well I’d say for the older crowd.
Have you ever had to teach teenagers how to format a document on Google Docs? Watched them type? Given them instructions for navigating file extensions and giving their documents names? It’s *rough* and has basically the same vibe as trying to teach my dad how to add an attachment to an email.
Omfg, my husband just shared your comment. It gave me fucking flashbacks. I don’t even know what OP’s post is about, lmao. People think that since this generation has quick access to technology and google that they somehow know how to use it. BS. These kids just know how to use apps that are already prebuilt. I taught English for 11 years, and NOTHING mentally exhausted nor aggravated me as much as trying to teach them how to format a Google Doc and/or do a proper Google search. Not even teaching essays nor grading them! Google’s own Applied Digital skill content isn’t that helpful. I guess it’s harder in a way because like math there are a sequence of steps that must be had. After emails became the norm, I had to begin each school year with a 2 week mini unit on professional email writing. Some of them would write their entire message in the subject. Some would not even include a subject. They would not only use poor grammar but they wouldn’t even tell me what assignment they were referring to. Some treated it like texting and would just send a block of aggravating text to read. I also had to teach them what “business hours” and “business days” meant because they’d send the email at 8 that morning and asked if i had read it or answered them by 2nd period. I soon stopped “complicated” Google Doc lessons and recorded those videos instead. I had a library of how-to videos in one part of our LMS. I did do a lot of practice writing in Google Docs, and that helped them more than teaching them about numbering pages for MLA format. My favorite thing I did was have them name their files with their name and assignment name. I’m currently in grad school for my English MA and am surprised by how many adults still don’t do that. Ok, let me end this, lmao. ❤️ 🤗 Thanks for helping teachers like me be seen, lol.
>Some of them would write their entire message in the subject Omg this has me dying 💀
I ran IT for a school district. This is VERY COMMON in my experience
My peeps! 🤗 The IT guys knew me because I was always bothering them. When YouTube was becoming mainstream, I kept badgering them to allow it. I was kinda like Andy from Shawshank Redemption. They relented, lol.
Like wtf though honestly
My partner teaches high school biology, and even SHE had to teach the students not to put the entire 10+ sentence content of their email... IN THE SUBJECT LINE.
LOL. Thank her for me, seriously. ❤️ It's nice to hear of other subjects taking some time to teach real-world writing. You'd be surprised at how against it English teachers are, especially high school. I understand being zealous bibliophiles, but teaching overrated (usually suckyass) classics doesn't translate to real life, ya know? Admittedly, I've always been fonder of the composition side. Interestingly, my district knew I was obtaining my masters in Curriculum & Instruction, and my district content coordinator asked if I'd like to get my feet wet and create a mini prof. dev. on my email unit, so it could be used more districtwide. OMG, I cannot tell you how excited I was. JFC, the whines I got and "why" we gotta do this. Don't kids have phones? 🙄 Anyways, I am glad I did it, but it was surprising. Haha, toodles! 🤗
Your services are indispensible for keeping civilisation propped up, for without those who teach, the world will simply devolve into monke By the way, reading your comment reminded me of the luigi board video and the gregnant video... for some reason.
OMG!!! 🤣 I had never even *heard* of those videos. They were so hilarious! I always welcome a good laugh. That brought back so many memories and the familiar cringe. I just can’t tolerate someone not clicking the fucking spell check. My kids knew how absolutely incredulous I’d get about it and the unprofessionalism of not using it. I encouraged them to always help me spot my own typos, especially since we did a lot of “live writing.” I would give them reward tickets when they did. *Holy shit*! Let me tell you; it turned them into vigilant editors who’d hunt for them on all handouts and since their own spelling sucked, they’d google the words to confirm their suspicions; it brought about good classroom banter. What really surprised me was that they began doing it in *other* classes, lmao. I’ve received emails from colleagues in the past, stating that they don’t like the kids pointing out their errors. Umm, sorry, *Mrs Adams,* but teachers aren’t above reproach and should use fucking spell check, too. While I never brought up that idea nor encouraged it, I never discouraged it. Anyways, haha. That got me reminiscing and free writing. Thanks for your kind (and funny!) comment. 🤗
When I found out my 16 year old didn’t have an email account, or know how to get one, it floored me and left me a little disappointed in his generation as a whole. Then I had the joy of teaching my grandpa how to work a roku and I realized the kids are still miles ahead.
That Roku comment, lol. Adults are way more annoying to teach. Yeah, it is disappointing. I worked at a 1:1 district, but the downside is that the kids get too many emails. A lot of them will shut down from seeing so many. I gave up having them organize it (like their Google Drive, lol). However, we would get them set up to have their teacher emails added to their Google contacts and starred when they received it. Honestly though, the improvement vs. hellish effort was so imbalanced. I think this is where something like a scaled down Bard A.I. would be so revolutionizing for classrooms. Just to have AI "prompt" them and review their papers and give feedback, even if it's capped 3 times per day. I had Bard write and submit a ton of feedback/suggestions for me, lol. Anyways, toodles! ❤️
I need to know what type of teenagers you’re around because my 17 year old brother knows how to do these things perfectly and I’ve been using Google docs in Microsoft Word since I was 8 alongside my other younger brother. Even the High-school I went to the so-called “dumb kids” still knew how to easily access a PowerPoint. I still remember the days that I had to even use a USB drive to save my book reports online for my teacher lol. Typing though, I feel different. I’d say I’ve met people who typed way faster than me alongside the T-Rex hands equally give great and horrible work lol.
when people go to college for computer science they literally have to to teach them this basic stuff now because a lot of people dont actually know.
That’s normal. You want to start people at the same spot so that less experienced students don’t start the class having to catch up. Every ML class I take always starts by reviewing linear and probability, just like how every upper level math class I’ve taken still covers simple topics like real numbers and modulo.
This literally goes for any major dude lol.
Computer science students in college, who the commenter you are responding to is referring to, should have basic knowledge of how to navigate file explorer.
Umm no. My very first computer science class freshman year taught me principles of object oriented programming and introduced me to java, not how to open a file in Windows. That's crazy.
That’s still the case today, they start u off in OO languages, nothing has changed from y’all’s generation to now. It’s a blatant lie that they have to teach basic computer stuff to cs students let alone any college student. You either know it already, learn it yourself, or gtfo. Source: studying CS in college right now
People really are fighting hard to live in the fantasy world where 16 year olds don’t know how to save a word document as a PDF. Like I’m 25 and in gen z. At most I just didn’t know I could save a page as a pdf by printing it and selecting PDF as a printer. Like I’ve worked with teens and I don’t know why people are pretending they don’t get forced to do MLA formatted sources or whatever it is now for papers. They know how to save a template to avoid doing more work later cause that’s how laziness works with teenagers. They work hard to avoid working hard. Why’re people actively pretending like they don’t just talk to stupid teenagers? Cause whoever they know that majors in anything involving computers that doesn’t know how to navigate file explorer by the time they’re in college is just stupid. They aren’t the average person, they’re stupid.
That isn’t true and quite an ignorant statement.
thats the thing the professors who have taught these classes since the 80s and 90s have never had to teach this before because people just knew.
I teach grades 9-12. And have taught in multiple states/countries. It’s everywhere.
Rough is an understatement. I was an adjunct at a community college and one of my classes was a dual-enrollment course on what was basically Microsoft Office. I originally thought it was going to be a waste of everyone’s time (given how the G Suite mimics it) and was a fluff course the school had built in for an easy A. It was not The biggest surprise to me was that they didn’t know how to email themselves documents. I once spent 45 minutes showing them how to send an email to themselves with attachments. But I couldn’t really be mad because at least they took the initiative to learn a skill they knew they’d need.
I've been teaching computer courses at the college level since 2015. This fall I'll be adding a 1-day file-management unit to my courses because it's becoming frustrating getting "project1.pdf.pdf" or "project2(1)(1)(1).pdf" turned in, or seeing a student go to their desktop and have 1000+ files all stacked on top of each other.
I hear you. The absolute bane of my teaching life is that Google Docs allows “Untitled Document” to remain the default file name for docs. I start all my classes very similarly: creating a folder for all their classes in Drive, how to format titles, etc. It’s frustrating, but I’m hoping most of them continue to use the skills outside my class.
Just because Google Docs allows them to name the file that doesn't mean you have to accept that as the turned-in file name. If a student sends me a file without their name as part of the file (i.e. jdoe\_project1.pdf or jdoe\_project1.zip) I email them back and have them re-send it to me with the correct name. For some projects, that can mean they also have to go in and re-link files, which they wouldn't have to do if they named it correctly in the first place.
Oh, I don’t! It’s just an extra step/time suck.
Hell, we have 20-somethings, 30-somethings and 40-somethings all say the same stupid shit in an office setting: "derp, I'm not good with computers, hahahahah!" MF'er, you had a computer in EVERY CLASSROOM from Kindergarten on, if you can't make a new Word doc and save to a specific folder, WTF are you doing working in an office?
I totally agree with this! I regularly see my younger brother (teens) use the speech-to-text function on his iPhone if he doesn't know how to spell a word.
I would say that it's definitely true for Gen Z in most parts of africa as compared to millenials who had to learn everything sitting in cybercafes for hours everyday after school just for fun to learn. Today they barely exist anymore because everyone has a smartphone. I just don't get how they are so savvy about navigating around social media (and even then... they wouldn't be able to sponsor a post for example on their own) but are absolutely unable to export a Google Docs or reinitialize the password of their email adress.
is it possible that zoomers who aren't tech illiterate wouldn't be in your class at all
I teach English, so that’s fairly unlikely.
You're explaining how to set the idle on a 4 barrel Holley carb to people who learned to drive in dad's Tesla. And I say that as a 58 year old in tech who was literally chatting with some college buddies earlier today about writing a program on punched card terminals.
Oh lord lol you’re reminding me of the time I mentioned one day in class that I learned how to drive on a tractor, and it was almost immediate chaos. But yeah, I hear you. I feel like these skills should already be taught and reinforced before they get to high school, but it is what it is. Unrelated, but I miss those dot matrix printers. I loved pulling the margins off of papers and the ink smelled so good!
The computer center in college had the massive band printers and there were literally linear feet of 11" wide continuous paper. We got about 4 boxes of old printouts once and pulled it out and wadded it up to fill a friend's entire grad student office floor to ceiling in paper. Poor man took FOREVER to clean it up.
I had an intern work under me as an electrical engineer. I'm mid millennial and he is mid gen z. He couldn't even manage to figure out the file explorer when I needed him to pull up drawings. He didn't even know there was a search function for things on windows. Kids are falling in the same tracks my parents are. No need to learn how to do things, as long as someone streamlines the UI. They can click their way through most things, but I see how bad they are.
As a PM, we have a bunch of research on this and you’re pretty much right. The phrase “tech literate” has changed over the years from “I understand how this system works” to “I can use software to do a certain set of things”. And the reason is older generations like millennials had to understand how the system works to some degree to use it. The idiot proofing has made it so that that’s no longer required or learned.
I do the IT presentation for new-employee orientation at my company and I've had probably six people over the last year who didn't know how to capitalize a letter using a standard laptop keyboard. They've all been Gen Z. The lack of PC usage of this generation, combined with an inability to troubleshoot basic issues, has led me to side with you. They've never had to troubleshoot, so they simply don't know how.
I imagine a lot of this is because they've never had to type stuff in on a physical keyboard. They've been doing everything on their phones. Just as an aging tech nerd, I'm getting chills down my spine thinking about how in 20 years or so, keyboards will likely be the purview of the elderly and insane.
Why doesn't pushing down harder on the keyboard popup a menu with caps and alternative language versions of the letter? Is this broke?
My 13 year old nephew wanted a gaming pc, and since I’m an enthusiast, I had enough spare parts to make him an awesome one with glass, rgb and the works. I give it to him and he has NO idea on how to use it except for launching games and opening chrome. A year later he still calls me when he wants to install games..
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Because most CS students don't take network administration. Why would they? They are becoming software engineers. I'm a 50-year-old software engineer, and I would have to google how to do that on modern Windows. I haven't had to deal with any of that stuff since the early 2000's, because technology has improved since then. Unless you are a network admin, there's not much call for that knowledge. On the other hand, when I was teaching I had intro Freshmen students (gen-Z) hand-writing neural networks in C++.
Perhaps they just haven’t learned the art of Googling things before letting the higher ups know. There’s a lot of basic stuff people miss in from college curriculums.
Worked with a CS Grad in the late 90s, could not set a assigned IP on their 98 box. Could not work in hex either, did not last long.
Computer science it theory and you’re an asshole. Not everyone takes networking classes and not every school offers them. I’ve been in the industry ten years and I learned networking when I needed to on the job. As a mentor it’s your job to provide the assistance needed to deliver. They’re expected not to be perfect. This honestly is more your failure than hers and you should learn how to develop your hires instead of mock them.
i’ve met product managers less tech savvy than my left ass cheek. 8/10 times, they’re the reason most things get more convoluted.
Exactly this. I’ve met very few product managers who understand the tech in my career as a dev.
i don’t think anything fills me with more rage than seeing an email 5-6 minutes before i planned to log off, copying damn near everyone in the whole organization with some stupid fucking suggestion, that they’d know was a bad idea if they gave it just a little bit more thought.
Well, there goes your job security right there. As long as there exist people who suck at tasks, then there will always be a need for others who specialize in that task to help them. That is, as long as there exist limitations on the hand holding that ai can do.
> making tech idiot-proof The thing is, the universe just makes better idiots.
People always sound dumb to me when they complain about kids not being able to what they used to, while also complaining they can’t figure out how to do the things kids are doing
For real. It's simply a different generation, and technology constantly keeps advancing and evolving. *Why* would the kids still do things the "old way" if theirs is easier and more efficient now?
Navigating a file system and downloading email attachments are not "the old way" though, those are extremely common use cases for almost any job.
Wait, isn't GenZ in their mid to late 20s? There is no way they don't know how to do that. My kid's 10, and he knows how to look through files, download email attachments and unzip files. Admittedly, he's growing up in a tech family (my husband is a software engineer), and he's programming little games and mod packs for Minecraft and Roblox with his buddies, so he has a deeper interest in that shit due to necessity. Still, there are YouTube tutorials for literally everything, even how to download an email attachment, which is how my son figures this stuff out.
That's why. Stuff that seems easy to us technically inclined is only because we've been exposed to it for so long. Ask the average teenager nowadays what a modem or router does and they'll have no idea.
I'm gonna be honest. If someone asked me what a modem or router does, I wouldn't be able to answer with more than "Uh, it sends and receives signals so I can use the internet...?", and I'm in my fucking 40s, lol. Actually, I could regale them with some anecdotes from yesteryear, about the shrieking noise the dial-up modems used to make before connecting. That should garner me *some* points! 😆
That's better than most lol
I was recently training a recent college grad and she didn't know how to do anything. She didn't understand the file system navigation for PPT, or even basic things with Chrome. I asked if she was used to a Mac and she said no. I honestly don't know how she got through college without this knowledge.
My wife had 12th graders not know how to use file explorer or search. Even using a mouse was hard. This is at a prominent school…
Using a mouse?!? But...that's so much easier and more intuitive than a touch pad! I don't understand! Or, maybe I just don't know how to use a laptop without a mouse properly, let alone a Mac book. 🤷♀️
I can tell you as someone who (briefly) worked as a science teacher that kids in the 12 to 14 age range that I taught were, for the most part, terrible with *actual tech literacy*. They can open apps and navigate just fine on a phone interface, but the idea of attachments, extracting files, installing programs that aren’t conveniently click-and-go from an AppStore etc stumps them. We taught them this, and they learn it quick, but even all the way up to the older Gen Zers in their twenties there’s a sharp delineation point between one’s who grew up at a time where you had to know how a computer worked to use it, and one’s who have pretty much only ever used tech that is incredibly intuitive and self explanatory. This isn’t a failing or anything like that on their part, it’s just really fascinating to see the sharp difference. The kids who did the best with tech were either from tech households, or the kids who played games on their PC and so understood some of the basic commands of navigating folders and installing programs.
They would crumble trying to download music on limewire.
It's because they've all been using Chromebooks and tables for the last 5+ years.
Good point. My son's school provided every kid with Chrome books starting in kindergarten.
I'm one of those stubborn people who searches their computer for 10 minutes, for a specific file or function, and it's my son who asks "Why don't you just type it in the search bar...?" like I'm an idiot. I mean, I guess I kinda am in this instance, lol. On one hand, the stories in this thread are blowing my mind, considering how terminally online so many young people are. But, I guess most of that is just social media, which is done primarily on their phones, so it doesn't seen as unbelievable anymore.
Hold your horses. I'm 27 and i do not consider myself Gen z whatsoever. Big difference between my childhood and most of their's.
I was just going by the birth years the internet gave me, which was 1996-2010. Don't worry, the labels really mean shit-all. I'm Gen-X and everybody forgets we even ever existed, lol.
Uhh no? Gen Z is late teens to mid 20s
Oh, I thought 1996 is the first birth year for Gen-Z. 🤷♀️
It’s the transition year for Gen-Z in my interpretation. I’m 27 and consider myself a r/Zillennials (a mix of Gen-Z and Millennial).
I teach high school students. I can absolutely confirm that they don't know how to do that. I'm honestly shocked at the lack of computer knowledge of some of these kids. I once had a class of 32 students where I had to show almost the entire class how to name a folder and move a document into it. It wasn't enough to just describe it either. I had to walk around to each table and actually confirm or even point out where to click for the entire group to be able to do it. A few of them knew how to do it, the vast majority had no clue. I honestly think their lack of computer knowledge might become an issue in a few years.
It's an actual honest to god problem office workers are encountering now. I'm early 30's, and my little brothers are mid 20s. They grew up basically without computers and entirely on phones/tablets. Your son knows how because of how he's being raised, the only people I know that own PCs are basically gamers at this point.
The reason you teach the "old way" is because the founding principles of the old way are what built the new way. You learn the fundamentals so you have more tools to understand and navigate the complexities. Do I need to manually type in IP addresses for content on the internet anymore? No but it is certainly beneficial to know that IP address and DNS servers are still a real thing that affect me everytime I surf the web.
I remember when we all casually learned HTML to personalize our MySpace pages, lol.
You basically still use some of those skills when formatting text on reddit lmao. Markdown mode in reddit uses similar syntax to HTML lol
Unless you can figure out the things kids do because it's very basic, and the things kids can't do are very basic. I took a computer applications course to fill out some elective credits when I went back to school. It was very rudimentary intro to navigating Microsoft windows, word, excel, PowerPoint. Every fucking person in that class seemed like it was their first time using a computer. It's because as applications move more and more towards "user friendly", they take away a lot of the figuring stuff out portion of computer work. It was honestly mind blowing, before that I assumed younger folks would be MORE tech savvy, not less. But they know how to operate an iphone, so I guess they have that going for them.
This is kind of correct. I could whup genz (even most millienials) butt at addressing serious issues in Windows, Linux, macOS -- both on the OS itself and software that runs on it. When it comes to doing heavy stuff on the phone, I'm clearly a touch slow using apps. I'm perfectly capable, but sometimes there's a feature I have trouble finding or seeing the UI component for. *However,* this is literally me refusing to invest in doing certain tasks on my phone when I'd rather do them on a PC. Basic example is filling out a complex form. Keyboard and mouse on my PC is greatly comforting when I need to place an online order after a website sign up. Can I do it on my phone? Yes. But goodness is it slow and annoying. I can do the same on a PC twice as fast, while multiltasking YouTube learning video, and building code or configuring my text editor. Those of us that are very fluent computer users understand that new devices are capable of a lot in the hardware, but we are jaded that utilities that are locked behind paid, ad-packed, tracking, and/or subscriptions apps that force you to give away your data (kudos to Apple for taking a half step to address this). I don't need to send messages and basic digital images and video through some new app and sign up for more new bullshit. I keep my eyes on the prize: what is the app doing to serve me or enhance my life? Not "what keeps me up with the trendz." Apps like Snapchat, IG, Vine, and TikTok are not advancements in technology. Sure, the algorithm that serves you better content was the advancement, but for you the only improvement was lower effort finding entertaining stuff that is related to stuff you consumed before. I'm still on YouTube where I proactively search out specific topics to continue to educate myself on things not learned. Of course I consume entertainment there too. If and when a new app comes out that serves that purpose better, I'm all for it and will easily learn it. Until then. I don't give a shit that I don't efficiently post IG or TikTok content. Kids can laugh all they want. I lament that their skills has nothing more than social validation that probably doesn't even carry over to their IRL interactions.
Well I’d generally agree with you but knowing how to use a computer is actually important for most jobs. We really aren’t at the “who even uses a computer anymore” stage in the timeline. Not even close.
my personal experiences: 21 year old during our training: "how do i update chrome, i hate this technology shit!!" me trying to help someone with their word doc: where did you save the file to? 17 year old: "i don't know where it goes when you save."
I've had similar experiences in my professional life. Had some interns a few years ago, all of them programming students. They really knew their stuff when it came to structuring code and using githib, but more than one I had to explain the hierarchical structure of a file system, how to 'cd' to another directory, and why would this command work in directory X but not Y. I can see why they didn't know something so 'basic' (to an IT worker for over a decade). Being raised on phones and tablets would do that. Still it was a shock!
As a 23 year old who's basically obsessed with technology (got the CompTIA A+ certification earlier this year), I feel like there's multiple factors at play there. In high school here in Houston we were all given actual school laptops to use for schoolwork and homework, not the Chromebooks that apparently have become more prevalent. Because of this the laptop form factor is also more accessible to newer computer users. Non tech people aren't gonna know that desktop hardware is infinitely more powerful than laptop hardware. I think because a lot of younger people are also increasingly using Apple products, they get to Windows later on and are like "WTF am I looking at???" I mean Mac's early slogans included one of "It just works" Casual Mac users aren't using the full power of Apple silicon, but there are casual PC gamers that do that with their Intel or AMD chips and dedicated graphics cards. There are multiple PC system integrators that will just build your computer for you, while on Apple you're just getting a Mac with this much ram at this price. PC and Mac have analogous features but the have different names, making it difficult to switch even though Microsoft has started adopting some Apple schtick. ChromeOS is just different stuff entirely. That's just how it is, I know people who have used computers of both major OS damn near every single day for decades and still need help for things. The casual or uninformed users face the impossible task of attempting to harness the ever increasing power of technology.
I like this explanation, or at least it feels more relevant to me. I’m 39 now, but in my mid to late 20s and early 30s I got into building my own PCs for a little while (being broke was a great motivator at the time), even though I was using Mac based hardware for my jobs at the time. When I got into the blue collar workforce and became more hands on I’ve definitely lost some of the “feel” that you need to navigate constantly changing technology - I’m no longer interacting with it on a daily basis so that muscle has gotten substantially weaker. Ironically, I got my brother into building PCs, and now when he mentions graphic cards/motherboards etc, I’m simply like “I have no fucking clue what any of this means but have a blast”. As I make more money now I’m lazy as shit and just use software that dumbs everything down for you, but I’m still *light years* ahead of the old fucks at my job, who think I’m some tech guru. I don’t know shit anymore.
I also think that with the advent of smartphones and their widespread use, dedicated computers are becoming kinda secondary. Smartphones can do a lot of what a computer can do, and some like Samsung can even be turned into a computer like experience with things like DeX. Tablets are replacing computers as well, moreso on the Apple side with iPads being advertised as laptop replacements. Outside of PC gamers that are in the know or tech enthusiasts, the amount of people building their own computer is still relatively small I think. I haven't actually built one yet, but I've worked inside of a few and it's what made me decide to get the A+ cert to try and find a job doing it. I am also in the same camp of thinking I don't know shit, but knowing way more than the people around me lol. I'm the resident IT guy for basically everyone I know.
Yeah this has been my experience when I helped people at work with tech stuff. Younger peeps are more geared towards phones and tablets. Often I had to show people 10+ years younger than me how to do basic shit on a computer like using the fucking Start menu.
To be fair with the new cloud providers, I too sometimes “don’t know where it goes when I save.” But I can pretty quickly figure it out.
Gen Z definitely parallels boomers with the tech illiteracy. Although it's not because tech is difficult and complex anymore (stuff boomers dealt with), it's because tech is easy and accessible you don't really need to "know" it, so to speak
Current fashion trend cycle puts us around the 80s now. Maybe tech literacy is also cyclical l
80s? They bringing back early 2000s fashion already 😂
Super low-rise jeans coming back is killing me. I want to stop it, but don't know how. It's the trend that launched a million eating disorders.
I have graduating seniors in CS/IT unable to do things that are integral to their field. Queue old man voice: " back in my day". You HAD to understand everything in order to do anything. That barrier meant that in order to get anything real done required more self directed work and a genuine interest in how things worked. Countless hours tinkering on your own. Sooo many students have gone into the field with the mistaken assumption that computer jobs will be easy and navigate their curriculum to find the professors that are "easy" or easy to cheat with. Its not necessarily a Gen Z thing. Its that since computers are more accessible more people are avle to pass by without the knowledge needed to excel. And instructors can no longer rely on that niche population that is already self taught to do their job. Now that all said. When I really push them to do more than the basics for their senior projects. Most of them are able to step up, dig deep, and get some really impressive projects done. We can't rely on the self selection of the field anymore. We need yo adapt to how we teach. Quite frankly we should have changed a looong time ago.
My wife teaches middle school and she said her students didn’t know how to do things like attach a file to an email or save things to a specific folder but she also said it’s because they use google drive for basically everything so they haven’t need to learn how to do those things.
I blame Apple
Google is more relevant. To most middle and high schoolers ChromeOS is the operating system they know best. ChromeOS has no real file system and abstracts away most local computing to seamless internet browsing. Mac OS has a file system and fairly transparent relationships with applications.
Bin-fucking-go
Exactly, you had to know how to get computers puting on Windows through to XP (greatest OS). These kids never trapped in DOS.
> trapped in DOS my god
Gen Z kids are not writing school reports on phones.
Kids were writing papers on their phones when I was in high school 13 years ago. They are absolutely still doing that now that the screens are twice as large.
Graduated HS in 2021, in college rn. Writing reports on phones is a giant fucking hassle. Switching between apps/tabs is slow, the keyboard is cramped, tiny screen in comparison to monitor makes it uncomfortable (and I have a massive phone), and submitting stuff can be annoying depending on how it needed to be submitted. I dont know a single person that preferred writing papers on their phones. Everyone only used them when there were no other options.
Yeah I never said kids exclusively write papers on their phones, just that it happened regularly.
I have Google docs on my phone. I can (and have) written the bulk of several university essays on my phone and then proofread them later on my PC. Not because I prefer it, but because I'm not always at my desk. I do always have my phone on me.
I graduated in 2020 and never heard of anyone who couldn’t use a computer. But I think we had pretty effective class introducing us to the basics.
My knee-jerk reaction to this was "Well, that's fucking stupid of them! Typing on a laptop/PC with a large keyboard is so much easier and faster!" But, could it be that some kids can't afford a laptop, whereas phones are considered a basic necessity nowadays, and "cheaper" with a plan, maybe? In that case I could understand them doing it that way.
They are absolutely not doing that. Have you ever tried writing a lab report or making a powerpoint presentation on your phone? There's not a single soul I know that was choose to do assignments on their phone over paper or PC. This is coming from a current high school student. Writing documents on mobile is buggy, slow, and all the options that are 2 keystrokes away on a laptop are hidden behind 4 menus on your phone. There are a few keywords you put in your comment- "when I was in high school 13 years ago"- that tell me you can't speak for anybody currently in high school. My peers only use their phone for assignments when they have no other options.
As someone that's worked on a University campus for over half a decade, kids are absolutely doing papers and discussion board postings on their phones. We just had this conversation in a meeting this morning. I'm not saying it's what I'd do, or that it's very efficient, but they are absolutely doing it.
I mean, there's probably a lot of variables that go into it- I've been exposed to public Elementary schools and High schools in Canada where doing an assignment on your phone is practically unheard of. University and College might be different, but I don't have the perspective to speak on behalf of that. As I read more of this thread, there seems to be more division between Adult Gen Z and Teen Gen Z than I thought.
> They are absolutely not doing that. Have you ever tried writing a lab report or making a powerpoint presentation on your phone? I see that somebody never procrastinated on their project and needed to finish by the time you got to campus....
I've done it twice, I did an entire social assignment and like half a chem assignment on the bus. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy lmao
That anxiety shaved years off both our lives, I'd bet.
I couldn't tell if the bus was shaking or if I was shaking but I ended up getting a 65 something on the social assignment and a 90 on the chem assignment. All's well that ends well!
I was talking about simple word documents but go off
My statement still stands, lab reports are done in simple word documents- I didn't really think I needed to give more than two examples since you gave one yourself, but go off.
Wordcount
Huh?
I had a support case I to deal with where an executive at the company had spent an hour making suggestions to a report all through the iOS OneDrive mobile app for an hour. Depending on the app you can do quite a bit. Now I wouldn’t want to write a lab report on mobile but apparently some do.
Gen Z kids are not writing GOOD school reports on phones. It’s a huge pain in the ass to write a report on a phone. A lot of high schoolers are given free chrome books to write reports by the school, a system that was not in place 13 years ago when you were in highschool.
They 100% are (have been teaching high school humanities for 7 years). Not all, or even most, but plenty are writing essays on their phones.
They absolutely are. I graded tons of college assignments while doing my PhD, and it was not at all uncommon. Most use tablets or laptops, but still plenty used their phones for everything. It was wild
Why don't we help them be better with computers then? ( Although by Gen Z I think you mean like early twenties and high schoolers so that's why I'm like teach the babies(
Yes, I can understand younger Gen Z like children. However, for the most part me and my brothers, knowing the youngest is going to be an adult this year know how to fully use computers.
Yes I see the kids at work and they can use their little school laptops so I just thought they were fine because there's a lot of millennials who only have basic skills
I 100% agree it also goes for Millennials and pretty much everybody that the average person is only looking for a computer to access basic skills which is fine. It’s still determines that you know how to use a computer. People in the comments are over here talking about “Oh my gosh you can’t access your IP address, burn files, change and break apart your CD-ROM😳?” Newsflash, most people with computers are not doing that.
We’re suppose to blame the younger generations and act like our clearly archaic education system isn’t the problem. We send kids to education factory that’s out dated on many fronts then blame them for not having skills they don’t teach in school generally. Don’t teach useful knowledge a lot of the time like anything finance related or any skills that may be applicable in the work force. Shit is useless outside of teaching people specific sciences, your states white washed history, math, and English.
not knowing how to get around in CMD.exe versus not being able to use Microsoft Word... that doesn't math out
Yeah, I’m not understanding the flex here. Using CLIs are still very relevant; especially if you’re using Windows and Linux.
I’m in school with gen z and here what I got from them. Nobody takes notes. Writing or on the Computer -90% of them can’t type on a computer… at all. Like just index finger typing - no imagination what so ever. Was going to school for graphic design in illustrator class kids just kept getting caught literally just taking some video game artwork and turning it in. - html css class kid got his roommate to make him a spider man webpage which looked like it came straight out of Wordpress or wix - everyone loves Kpop and I’m just like it’s literal black samples 90s music with people that don’t even like black people at all. oh yea they trash at dancing. All them years of doing TikTok videos and only dancing to lyrics not moving there feet at all really took a toll 😂
Idk I went back to school and these gen z kids are good at math and physics. But I’m in a stem field so maybe they’re the exceptions!
Yea but that’s my point ironically creativity is kinda lacking but it’s not their fault cause so much technology and content. But I really shouldn’t judge cause millennials are def worst off
Really? I feel so lucky to be a millennial and not gen z. I can dance AND use a computer 😂
Part of the issue for Gen Z and A are that they never have to bored now, and that's the time to grow creativity. Most of their schools also defunded and devalued the arts, and just taught how to take a test. That's a bad mix for creativity.
> it’s literal black samples 90s music with people that don’t even like black people at all. In Korea, clubs in Itaewon or Gangnam will be playing Saweetie, Doja, Drake or a bunch of other black artists and turn away black tourists at the same time.
Aight but... If kids are really generating whole ass reports with AI and are incapable of actually producing them on like... A word processing app, like typing them up in Microsoft Word? I'll admit to being concerned. That goes beyond tech literacy that's just the literal bare minimum
shit, it's somewhere below the bare minimum
I feel like this is just a natural progression of things. Tech became easier to use for convenience, which isn't a bad thing. But I do feel like some things were lost with it. The days where getting setting up a new computer involved installing software, loading drivers, manually setting up network connections. It was a bit of a hassle but you learned something during the process. Also due to capitalism tech companies have made it harder to work on your own devices. The days of let's just open it up and see what's inside seem to be gone, because they'd rather seal it shut and have you buy a new one.
Teacher here. Gen Z (aside from gamers) have no clue how to operate a computer. It is actually shocking. But the pc gamers know more about computers than me!
Computers are like cars. Just because you know how to drive one does *not* mean you know how to fix one and *especially* doesn't mean you know how to make one.
If you’re talking to teenagers that don’t know how to name files that’s just a stupid kid. Stupid people exist. Thinking everyone is stupid because those people were stupid is weird. I’ve worked with teenagers. If you know a teenager that doesn’t know how to rename a file, that is not the average teenager. That is a stupid teenager. I’m 25 and part of gen z. High school wasn’t that long ago and even using Google drive they’d have to rename files at some point. If they can’t understand how right clicking to open a new tab on their browser like they do when downloading mods for games while not losing the page, they can understand how to right click for more options. Again, if they aren’t able to do that, it’s not a sign that gen z is tech illiterate. It’s a sign that you’re for some reason interacting with only tech illiterate people. Maybe look into where you are or who you’re talking too that doesn’t know these basic things before moving to the only reason is cause their whole generation is tech illiterate. Sometimes kids never have access to computers and only have had the internet over a phone so yes they type papers on their phone and don’t know about file explorer.
Every time my son wants to know something he just asks Siri. I tried showing him how google search works and I could just read his face internally saying “wtf… why type out a search, filter results, and then read answers when I can just talk to Siri and get the same thing”
Siri can show him websites and tutorials on what he can do in knowing things. Shit sometimes Siri for me navigates to Google.
I used to try and fight it but now I embrace all the little ways he knows how to use technology better than me, or at least in a modern way
Kids these days cant google things Kids these days cant look things up in a library Kids these days are fine sharing water fountains with *those* people Kids these days cant forge a horseshoe anymore Kids these days cant take down a wolly mammoth for the pride of their tribe
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I work with a fair number of gen z, and they often have real trouble with basic things like understanding folder structure, creating Boolean search strings, and really struggle to interact with even basic office or browser software. The design choices that apple has made (that google and others have copied) have robbed them of the ability to tinker with the tools they will have to use the rest of their working lives
I’d say that as apart of Gen Z you will way more likely to see one with a Laptop than a desktop as a computer.
You keep saying "apart", when you mean "a part" , including the title.
I'm in my 40's when I tell kids what I used to have to do to online game in the mid 90's as a teen or the process to get a sound card to work on a PC game in DOS they think I'm outright lying to them.
Good old Soundblaster. And yeah I still remember doing things like creating boot disks and manipulating IRQ settings even though I really didn't have a clue what they did.
Technology is too intuitive at this point for kids to really have the ability to work through it with patience. Take this with a grain of salt but I read one article a few years back saying that gen-x tends to be the best generation as a whole to navigate technology due to starting with such crude technology and adapting along the way. Who knows if it’s true but I can make sense of it.
I haven’t noticed tech illiteracy but boy howdy do I see a lot of Gen Z who just simply cannot type on a keyboard. I’m talking full boomer two index finger hunt-and-peck from recent college grads
That’s actually odd and I have thought the opposite about Gen Z tbh. As a millennial who literally grew up through a lot of technological transitioning, I was fortunate to be able to learn how to use and interact with a lot of the new technology, so it’s pretty second nature to me. Gen Z practically leaves the womb with an iPhone so you’d think that’d translate to an easier time with modern day tech because of an earlier exposure to it. Smart phones really out here making folks dumb.
The transition from analogue to digital did a lot in making us tech literate. A lot of the edges are smoothed down now, you don't *have* to learn tech to use it.
A lot of millennials grew up having to give themselves the resources required to be tech literate. No need for us to start being boomers about it simply because the next generation is taking tech resources for granted. We (millennials) shouldn’t let the pride of what we gave ourselves get in the way of figuring out constructive ways to pass it on to the next generation. Not all of us are born to be role models, leaders, or mentors, I get that. But let’s just keep our position in the generational matrix in mind. Gen Z feels like our annoying cousins who asked “if our phones have games on them”, because that’s literally who they are. If you don’t have the patience, that’s cool, but don’t pretend you wouldn’t love the opportunity to have been taught technology versus wading through the trenches solo.
Maybe the basic tasks, but every person - my age, older, younger - does not know how to navigate through files. I've even seem some not know how to install an adblock, which I find surprising
Wait a minute. Kids are writing Reports and Essays on their Phones!? I'd wager teachers *looove* deciphering that predicitve text mess
I feel like people are arguing tech literate vs computer literate. Compared to the 90’s and 00’s there’s just less capital C desktop Computers around nowadays. Probably also doubly so for poor families. Additionally adults on margin probably don’t need to use a desktop computer to run their lives outside of work. Most banks, insurance, bookings all have apps you can use. I think on net people just understand OS’s less intuitively now i.e file systems, programs, network etc. since most of this is abstracted away on mobile + wires disappear. They also probably don’t use the much more configurable/detailed desktop applications and websites. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t even use websites if they don’t have to. I’m also not surprised about the typing skills. They’re not as emphasized in school anymore and I’m a 30yr old senior software engineer who couldn’t touch type until maybe 3 years ago. However until the new tech paradigms become standardized and can be used to configure/troubleshoot the computers they’re running on. Idk if you can describe them as tech literate; maybe mobile literate?
Umm... I use a cli daily, and yes, tech literacy does include having to use a command line to pass commands, there's literally no way around that. What is this tweet talking about?
a lot of my friends my age wouldn’t even know how to install a program onto their windows PCs. it’s basically just a chromebook to them. i remember i one time had to talk a friend step by step on how to install steam ffs.
Having worked with K-12, and now college students, there is a definite decline in technical know-how, not literacy. But you also have to realize that, from say 1983 to 2003, the technology changed drastically and frequently. In that same time span, 2003 to 2023, technology for sure improves, but it is not as drastic. An iPhone that came out in 2007, at it's most basic, works just like an iPhone that will come out this year. Press a box on a screen and it does stuff. So when the tech they are facing doesn't work exactly like they think it should, that's when the younger generations struggle.
There's 3 stages of Tech for most of us. 1. The stuff that's always been there that you don't recognise as Tech 2 The funky stuff released between childhood and middle age. 3. The useless crap that kids are into. My dad made sure we had all new Tech. First to have a phone in the house, a colour TV, stereo, video player, remote controls. I have the Sinclair ZX81 on my shelf. He once took me into the computer where he worked showing me what a Babbage card can do. I had friends in the 90s that laughed at me for getting dialup Internet in my house and leaving my kids to play with it. I made sure they got tablets mobile phones, smartphones, laptops. I did place very strict limits on games. The sad thing is now. I meet kids who's parents can't support the stage 1 Tech and there's a huge number of GZ getting left behind. We must do all we can to ensure all get to embrace the change.
I teach technology in middle school. The kids don't know how to use computers. They understand other kinds of tech. So we teach them the new stuff and relate it to the stuff they get, and they're okay.
I mean, I do write command line, and while you shouldnt be an expert, you should have some idea so youre not scared of it.
Yeah I think people overestimate how tech literate younger generationns are. They know how to use apps which is fine but those are specifically designed to be easy to use. I remember in highschool i had to teach a classmate how to use microsoft word of all things.
I find it... A little funny how class dynamics/poverty isn't really being mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if kids are writing essays from their phones because... Hey, you can write on them, and people around the world are more likely to own a cell phone than a home computer. If someone learns to Twitter finger out an essay because they can't afford a laptop, I don't want to talk shit. Also, in some parts of Africa and other parts of the world, there are large swaths of people who live in a smart phone culture but never really had PCs as a cultural norm back in the 90s/2000s. What is interesting though is how it's not great for programming or computer science. It's damned near impossible to write code well on a smartphone. So while gen z might know how to use technology-including social use (I have no idea how to run a social media marketing business but some 14 year old Twitter stans can)- id like to hear how they handle trying to script in python or debug something. I've also heard some African computer scientists and programming educators talk about the gap, especially when everyone using an iPhone/android but not writing a single line of Swift (or Kotlin or w/e) means a dependency on technology from other parts of the world rather than developing a strong base of white collar industry in their countries.
Todays kids are as computer literate as people in their 50s
Gen Z "kids" can be up to 25. None of my peers have issues with technology.
Just some bullshit brought to you by the same people that hate that I can only use cursive to sign my name.
Is knowing how to type properly important? I don’t know. But the true (not cusp) Gen Zs didn’t learn it in school. Same with cursive— can’t write it or read it. Is it important? I don’t know. But they didn’t learn it in school. Making change without the register telling you what the answer is? Must not have that on a standardized test, which is all they get to do in school anymore. It is great that technology is more accessible. But it is also sometimes like my boomer parents and my Gen Z niblings are the same people. It’s not fair to the younger kids— cursive is great for fine motor skills, correct typing is great for your wrist and back health, being able to figure out adding and subtracting is great because humans figured that out a loooooooong time ago. Also, these kids have had a magic device that can tell you ANYTHING and if they don’t know how to do something— they don’t even think to look it up. It’s just a 🤷♀️ and move on to something else easier. Why have we robbed kids of curiosity? It’s not on the teachers either. Admin, parents, college admissions teams need to set kids up to have a more well-rounded liberal arts education at a younger age. It literally improves STEM fields (math and music! So many studies how one positively impacts the other!), helps kids’ mental health to have creative outlets (and they need help with mental health.) Bring back recess, gym, physical outlets for energy. 8 hour quiet robot attention spans are not developmentally possible for kids and we punish the day dreamers as much as the disruptive ones. Why? It’s tough being a kid in the age of the internet) and standardized tests are trash for assessing what people actually know, have mastered and can do, especially in elementary and high school. And I say that as someone with 3 degrees and am in school for a 4th. Parents/family should be enforcing screen limits and making sure their kids can actually read and comprehend age appropriate materials. If you don’t learn HOW to learn at a young age, you’re climbing up the mountain barefoot for the rest of your life.
If you think they’re bad at emails and word documents you should see them try and use excel. Like watching a room full of kittens try to type out Shakespeare.
I taught gen Z in a field that required computer knowledge and they predominantly did not know how to use PCs. Even things like saving to the cloud was confusing to them. Devices being idiot proof just means people are ignorant of how they really work.
It is kinda interesting. As an elder millennial computer tech is so engrained that seeing younger adults come in to my work with very poor computer skills is a bit surprising. I guess they would run circles around me on a phone.
GenX here who is still learning. I thought the Gen Zs were lying when they would tell me they didn't know how to
This is a kind of a myth. I work at a high school and those kids don’t understand computer fundamentals AT ALL. It’s just assumed they do. They’ll press on the power button like a woodpecker on a tree and don’t know what the Caps Lock button does. They just learn as they go.
This makes me feel old, man. We’re in a bit of a transition period with technology in general. My college aged employees do know less but that’s simply because they don’t have a reason to learn much as tech improves; however, they have been fast studies, and it’s a lot easier to explain how to use data management tools and to teach things like how to flash a bios than it is for a 35 year old with the same amount of info.
I teach high school and Gen Z are NOT computer literate. Sure, they know how to use apps like Tik Tok, IG, SnapChat, and a few know What’s App (we are in the US) but that’s about it. Some have learned a few computer based apps like Canva due to online school.
a part
Don't be dumping on GZ, man. I got high hopes for them kids.