We are the bridge generation.

We know and saw a world without the internet and we experienced it when it first came to be.

We saw the first mass produced computers and computer devices which broke often, didn't work the way we wanted them to, they weren't fast and they didn't have much memory in any way. We were the first generation to see all this. Our parents were too old and busy to figure it out but we were young enough to be curious about it all. We also kept wanting to have the newest fastest hardware and software so we had no choice but to either buy, beg or steal these things to get them. We learned to swap parts, add parts, remove parts, install an OS, uninstall the OS, run backups, store data and learn it all on our own because there was no easy internet social media community to help you. Software was constantly changing and we had to keep up by either buying expensive titles or we learned about Linux and open source software or we became digital pirates or both.

Now the digital landscape has changed. Younger generations prefer handheld devices so to them everything is solid state ... they never can imagine changing the RAM, HDD, SSD, CPU, GPU or the PSU or even bothering to learn what those things are. Because everything is built in and no one (or very few) people bother with fixing or tinkering with anything. There are fewer people who learn about software and about how or where to find it, install it, configure it and run it. To new generations who only know the digital world through locked devices, there was less incentive to learn or even have access to know how these things worked.

We are the bridge generation. We got to see the world without the internet and the world with one. No one before us got to see what we saw, no one after us will experience what we went through. Our civilization dramatically changed during our lifetime and we got a front row seat.

Try teaching them.

The weird bit is that our parent's generation is also the one that build the damn things in the first place!

I'm glad that many kids are into PC gaming, at least. That's still a decent vector into computer proficiency and a little hardware knowledge.

Kind of. Those who were the first needed to know how computers did what they did... Because so often they didn't ...

Now your computers work without you needing to know how they do it Most are happy it simply works

Our parents didn't think it was important. Our kids don't think it is necessary.

Imagine how horse farmers felt about engine maintenance on the first automobiles. Early adopters probably knew everything about how to fix tractors and cars. But today, how many people know how to change their own brakes or flush the coolant?

Life evolves, and transitions come faster with every generation. It's good that nobody knows how to use a sextant or a fax machine.

Yes

The next generation doesn't know how to use a mouse because they do everything on the phone. And yes, I have met people like that.

My four-year-old daughter is shockingly proficient with a mouse and keyboard. Kid goes to town on Spyro: Reignited. My wife snagged an old PC from her office and we want to set it up for her eventually for learning, light gaming and MS Paint. We figure in another year or two we can set up a family Minecraft server and get her in on it. The dream is to get her playing Valheim with us when she's older.

Hoping she will be as good with PCs and I am, and would love to help her build one when she's grown.

Feels like it doesn't it? I enjoyed taking apart and fixing the family computer as a kid but it was also out of necessity. If it wasn't me? Then who else would or could?

I'm still trying to decide if it's a "when I was a kid I used to clean my own carburetor" situation. Like, is it a "back in my day men were men and we fixed our computers by hand", or more so, there's just not a need to dig into computers unless you enjoy it like any other hobby.

No one yet has touched on the success of planned obsolescence.