Gen Z and tech literacy going backwards?

[Internet Wizard]

Resident (older) zoomer here, learned the Computers from running/modding Minecraft servers, and fixing/building laptops/PCs thru my teens

I feel like there's generally two kinds of zoomshits

A Gen Z girl at work was talking about the "black box underneath her desk." Upon questioning her, she actually did not know that that was her PC.

The ones (usually girls) who are so knee deep in the "Apple ecosystem" that they're horrified of even using Windows, let alone doing anything "illegal". The furthest they'd ever go into tinkering is maybe changing their wallpaper or downloading Discord off the website. I guess the male equivalent would be dudebros who live on Instagram/TikTok
Bonus points - if in America, showing them an Android phone will be like a crucifix

My kid is late gen z/early alpha and he's genuinely pretty great with tech. Because I gave him an old laptop when he was pretty young and he had to learn how to keep it alive.

Then there's those that sort of grew up alongside Linus Tech Tips or other channels and were/are generally curious about this stuff. A lot of engineers/STEM people I know are actually more competent hardware-wise than millennials, and can take apart/assemble PCs like it's nothing. Ofc these kinds are usually "nerdier", but they're still refreshing to meet after dealing with the former all day (assuming they're not the deodorantless Asian kind)

 

[Two Hands]

Late zoomer here. Schools do the bare minimum in teaching students in how to use a computer with the most 'advanced' thing I remember being taught was how to partition a drive. At one point I remember arguing with a teacher that kept referring to a PC as the CPU. Tech literacy may have gotten worse with the government handing out dumbed-down Chromebooks to every student. It's a coin toss whether a Zoomer is literate or not because when you can do everything with a tap of a button, it's not surprising they give up when it comes to computers.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

While I do not condone pirating content (you should pay for content legally like a model citizen)

Look at this guy shilling for megacorporations that don't give a shit about him, what a faggot. Also, what if the content I wanna watch/play isn't available legally? Am I just SOL?

Being the "computer guy" and helping my friends in their 20's to use the file explorer is fun!

 

[Beautiful Border]

It's because Zoomers have it really good now and by having it really good now I mean that nearly everything about tech these days is pushing a button and something works as expected so you don't need to be Neo from the Matrix to make something work on a computer or any other electronic device now most of the time.

The other thing about this is that Gen Z is forced to interact with technology much moreso than Gen X or Millennials were at the same age. Most people have never been particularly tech-literate, but most people also didn't have to use them in work and school (or at least not to the same extent they do now). So with Gen Z it's much more glaring if they don't know what they're doing.

So did he just live in a remote cabin all his life? or just brought up on a phone? I thought most schools had kids learning on laptops as part of their study?

Most schools these days use Chromebooks, which are just as locked-down as iPads. They teach them to be comfortable with using a keyboard instead of a touchscreen but that's about it.

 

[Faceless Whore]

There must be variation in what schools teach because I went to a smaller/poorer school and the most they taught was typing, and even that didn't last long enough for it to become a proper skill. We didn't even learn Office or anything.

Are they actually retarded? This is not just tech illiteracy.

I've helped elderly boomers who think their monitor is their PC. The same sorts who think everything that they do on their computer is "the Internet". It's a common illiterate thing.

At one point I remember arguing with a teacher that kept referring to a PC as the CPU.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's gotten irritated about this. I've heard it's a British thing to call PC towers a "CPU". It's as stupid as calling a car a "steering wheel".

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

Are they actually retarded? This is not just tech illiteracy.

I guess the charitable interpretation is that she had not seen that form factor before and was used to slimmer models or that she was used to using all-in-one Macs. She had been using the machine for awhile as well. Really threw me for a loop regardless. I even had an older guy in his 70s that was not tech savvy at all but at least knew that that exact same form factor was his PC.

 

[Thomas Talus]

some shitty programming language that was only used to draw shapes.

Were people seriously still using LOGO in the mid-aughts? We were using that on Apple IIgses, and those things didn't even have hard drives.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Were people seriously still using LOGO in the mid-aughts? We were using that on Apple IIgses, and those things didn't even have hard drives.

Yes. They still held competitions for it. I think it was 2 years after I graduated primary school that they changed to teaching Python.

 

[PS2 Nishiki]

Being a zoomer myself, this is unfortuneately true. With the internet being more centralized, people (especially zoomers) have gotten more retarded when it comes tech literacy. Not only just that but Apple has also played a hand in this to the point where if you don't own the latest iSlop6000000, zoomers will think you're some kind of psycho.

Tech literacy may have gotten worse with the government handing out dumbed-down Chromebooks to every student.

Those things were fucking garbage, they would always break and were incredibly annoying to use because of the limitations they put on them. I remember teasing some fat beaner kid in class and he karate chopped his Chromebook and ended up bricking the thing.

 

[Safir]

No it isn't.

The share of computer users who don't know the basics of computers is going up. But it has been going up for a long time, and most of you here are young enough to have missed the explosive growth, from "everyone who uses a computer knows how to use a computer" to office workers who need to be taught how to save email attachments. And now we have babies with ipads, but it's not much of an increase, like maybe x2 to the x10000000 of yore.

But the share of the population who knows computers is also going up. Computers are cheap and you can fuck with them, and the knowledge is out there.

Finally (this is now a pessimistic reframing of the issue), what does it even mean to be "computer literate"? What do you want to accomplish? Do you know the hottest tiktok filters or whatever it is that zoomers are into now? This is computer use, too. You hacked a shooter to give yourself invulnerability, they piggyback on celebrity posts to give themselves gacha husbandos. And your parents (generally speaking) hated all videogames. And Walter Scott (died 1832)'s first historical novel was about how novels are for autistic neets.

 

[Two Hands]

Finally (this is now a pessimistic reframing of the issue), what does it even mean to be "computer literate"? What do you want to accomplish?

You know how to use a computer well enough that you can figure out most things by yourself and when you can't, you look for a solution online instead of getting your family's computer guy to do it for you.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

I know a zoomer who used a PC for the first time at 20 years old. He even admitted himself that is was worrying, and not all that uncommon.

This is fucking baffling especially since I've grown up with desktop computers at school and home. People who are four or five years younger than me don't know a single thing about computers in general and that horrifies me.

 

[Medic]

I think it depends on how gen-z was raised in a controlled environment with only electronics and following the modern thing, like wigger want to be's with supreme shirts and femboys with dyed curly hair. It creates a whole atmosphere of just Gen-z brain rot that the older generation hates and even some or half of gen-zers hate as well. In my college I use to go to there was a weird person with a big ass smile and big eyes who was nice to people and said shit about them behind their back. Then one day they ask me do you know what medication you can take for me. Without fucking context or shit, it was weird. Everyone was on their phones looking down and saying the weirdest shit yet I was the weird one in class even though one my students changed their name to a cartoon character and starting going by male terms and then the quite male autistic kid with an fixation of buttons turned trans and had a physical altercation with my female instructor. I don't think people in my generation are becoming just illiterate, but extremely mentally ill and possible serial killers.

 

[seri0us]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's gotten irritated about this. I've heard it's a British thing to call PC towers a "CPU". It's as stupid as calling a car a "steering wheel".

It's stupid but I can understand somebody referring to their car as "my engine".

 

[Gigantic Penguin]

It's stupid but I can understand somebody referring to their car as "my engine".

The easy solution is to call everything a box.

 

[invisibult plus+]

Tablets are a lot more common around here. Mind-boggling regression as a zillennial that enjoyed playing in Brood War LAN parties in the computer lab on lunch once in a while.

I think our generation was the last to have both cursive and typing lessons. While my middle school mostly taught Microsoft Office (and Flash for some reason), my high school had C++ courses, though I don't know what they have now. If I had to guess, everything's on Chromebooks or iPads.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Looks like it's that "competency crisis" brewing.

I blame "social media" and dumbed down education.

When I was in highschool I lamented openly there is so little focus on computer literacy, let alone learning how to program.

When I was in high school before Current Year, there was at least basic coding. Even if the systems were a bit old.

 

[WinRAR Free Trial]

On one hand it's nice because it's like I have the secret knowledge of... using a computer, and I'm leagues ahead of people in that regard, but at the same time NOBODY FUCKING KNOWS HOW TO USE ONE PROPERLY AND IT'S INSANE TO ME.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

Is it really a problem of a particular generation though? Most of my friends are like me, elder millenials, xennials, or younger gen-x, and I've had to explain the File Explorer and tell a few of them where the file goes when you download it. At work, non-IT staff regardless of age seem to not know shit about tech. Those around my age might remember shuttling files around on floppies or Zip disks, but these skills are lost if they're not used. I think it you're posting on Kiwifarms in 2024, you're likely more tech literate than most of the world regardless of what year you're born.

 

[FrigginWeeb]

A Gen Z girl at work was talking about the "black box underneath her desk." Upon questioning her, she actually did not know that that was her PC.

I work for a tech company and I've noticed boomers and gen z seem to use multiple objects for the same word, and multiple words for the same object.
Everything from the tower to the screen is considered "the computer", modems routers and switches are the same thing, and once or twice we've had people asking why wireless devices need wires for power.

If there ever was an extended worldwide power outage these retards would still be calling 911 weeks later