Memes

My favorite:

"Where did you save the file?"

"I saved it in Excel"

An unfortunate consequence of developers playing to the lowest common denominator of users for the last twenty years. Everything has been designed to be as easy and intuitive as possible for mobile, and troubleshooting skills have suffered as a result.

Not to mention that phones are crazy powerful and can do virtually everything these days, so fewer and fewer people are buying PCs.

If the general population is indeed "going backwards" in regards to tech literacy, it seems like demand for IT services is going to spike in the coming years. Good thing to keep in mind for young people choosing a career path!

just want to add, it's not the zoomer's fault. they were intentionally raised in ignorance because its apparently profitable

fuck the corporations who've deliberately turned our living computers into soulless commercial brainwashing surveillance machines

Don't blame the people, they often cant get a mobile and tablet and computer... blame the awful corporations who made everything an app and pushed locked down mobile and tablets environments

The key concept they're missing a lot of the time is that software sits within the file system and not the other way around.

This is largely because apps hide this and data is generally stored in one place on your phone (the downloads folder).

Best way to fix it - have 1--2 lessons entirely devoted to finding shit on their computer. My favourite activity is "ok, save your word file, close word, you now have 10 mins to find that file without opening word".

Messing around with your old WinXP/95 computer and then fixing that mess before your parents come home and scold you does wonders to one's troubleshooting skills. People of this generation never got to hear that scary XP error sound, and it shows.

True, and Alpha are even worst, most of them never touched a real keyboard, only use 2 thumbs on a phone. Don't tell them about windows (or/mac/linux) or what is a UI or how to use a mouse and navigate in a OS, they don't get double click or right click, resize a window, minimize a window (OMG THE WINDOW IS GONE!!!!) it's impressive.

I have seen a lot of late Z/early Alpha who cannot make some special characters on a keyboard like " or $ or even worst using AltCar. Using Word to write a letter, using keyboard shortcuts, etc. they are completely clueless with computers.

Xennials are fascinating to watch navigate through tech hurdles. They have a custom built toolbox built purely through trial and error.

Training some younger people at work: "click the cog in the corner to pull up the settings". "What's a 'cog'?" Some things people miss out on life when you've never seen a Jetsons episode.

The paradigm has changed. The rift between PC and smart phone. Is it really a surprise? My 18yr step kid can at least type on a keyboard with proficiency. Beyond that and installing games in steam, he's lost outside of that. Both I and his mom work in IT. We try to shore up the gaps, but it seems the 'kid' actively refuses to learn.

We are all working class.

Gen Z here, in college.

Some of these people are braindead when it comes to tech.

Like, I get if you're not used to technology because you're poor/had a lack of access to it, as many people might not have a home computer. So there were kids who were absolutely hopeless when it came to using windows at my tech school because they were broke, and the school only gives out Chromebooks (cause they're shitty and cheap).

But outside of not knowing a UI and different file formats, you should absolutely know how to use anything on the web, unless you literally lived in an area with absolutely no internet and electricity.

Some people at my college STILL don't know how to share Google documents correctly, and it's the most insane and frustrating thing to me. Literally any device with an Internet connection can use it. Windows, apple, Chromebook, Linux, you name it. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO WORK GOOGLE DRIVE?!?!?!

Like many comments have said, devs have dumbed down a lot of shit in the name of protecting users, and people expect stuff to just work without any issues/effort, which I get, but damn, you've never simply done a 5 mins search on Google or YouTube for a quick fix?

My hand-me-down phone journey started with a Samsung G Note 4 as a kid, then a old iPhone (don't remember which), moved to a Moto G Play 7 (I adore that thing today), moved to iPhone X, and now I'm at a Pixel 8a cause I put GrapheneOS on it. My mom got me it as a grad gift cause I hated my iPhone so much for all the shit I couldn't do while I was on it. I've always just liked Android and Windows more for the freedom to fuck up (which I never did), instead of Apple's shitty walled garden. And now I'm on Fedora, because I know I don't have to subject myself to a shit user experience on Windows just for simplicity.

But other people my gen who aren't willing to be adventurous for a bit and even try will never do that. Hell, you get shamed in school for not loving the Apple overlords and wanting Apple deciding everything in your life (green bubble shaming is real, I hated middle and early high school...). We want quick and easy, and we got it, but at what cost?

Zoomer in computer science here: I've noticed that there are two types of people in my age range, you have the people who are really passionate about technology for the sake of being technology and want to know how things work under the hood (like me) and people who see technology only as a means to accomlish a goal like writing a document, maintaining a social media presence, playing a game, etc, and can't care less about how it actually works.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the latter, but there can be conflict between the two groups because their priorities are completely different.

This is not unique to technology and you see this in other fields too. For example, you have the car enthusiasts who do their own oil changes and are constantly tuning up their cars, installing aftermarket mods, etc, and then you have everyone else who see cars as just a way of getting to where they need to go, have never even opened the engine compartment, and bring it into the shop when the scary lights on the dashboard appear.

I work on a help desk. We hired multiple Zoomers and they literally don't understand how computers work. They don't know what the registry is. Or what POST means. Or how to properly back up a user's data without using automated software.

They're fucking dumb. Nice. But dumb.

In my experience, Zoomers largely lack a lot of computer skills (specifically in troubleshooting), but, for me the huge difference between them and the older folks has been that the older folks will say things like "I'm just not a computer person ::laugh::" and refuse to be shown how to do anything whereas the Zoomer just doesn't know, yet, but are more than willing to learn.

ETA: NOTE: that's just the generalized trend ... some of the most knowledgeable technical people I've met are Boomers and some of the best computer techs I've worked with have been Zoomers.

Lot of boomer-like fist shaking in these comments.

Newer generations are going to find different things to excel at, and they'll inevitably give up on some of the old ways.

I'm an older zoomer but still a zoomer. Its a crazy dynamic seeing people my age and younger just not getting IT stuff. There's a high ratio of older to younger people where I've worked in IT too.

The challenges thst existed to use technology no longer exist, so there is no longer a reason to look under the hood for most people. It's like how a lot of generations after boomers don't know about how to change a tyre or spark plugs etc, cars got more reliable and industries created services to stop you needing to worry about that stuff.

As a kid I remember WANTING to play games with a friend on PC, he knew we needed a null modem cable and we went to pc shop 2 towns over got one and tried to figure out how to play together using it. Then when the Internet came out and we had to fight against Internet connection sharing so one computer could share Internet with friends pc. Trying to use no-cd patches just so we didn't need to keep grabbing cds to play games etc.

There were so many things you learnt back then but it was because we had no alternative, I get why tech knowledge has vanished and I don't blame them, they have had no need to solve the same problems and haven't grown with technology, it's been already established and they have had no need to concern themselves with it.

Problem is the working world still heavily needs PC skills and basic analytical ability so there needs to be more focus on those old "computer driving license" style courses so people can certify they know how to find a file and end task when something hangs.

One friend of mine told that he read once that kids these days doesn't even know how to create a folder (or directory), is that true?

Last night I offered to help my Zoomer classmate torrent Kamen Rider and he told me he was afraid of going to jail.

Back when computers were a novelty, we had schools dedicated to teaching people how to use them in my country.

The classes ranged from the most basic stuff, such as how to use a mouse, to more advanced topics, such as how to use the Windows registry.

We might need to bring these schools back in the near future.

I had to teach my zoomer intern how to use alt+tab and that you can just keep ctrl pressed and then just press the other key, they didn't need to be pressed on the exact instant to work.