"Kids Can't Use Computers" is now ten years old, and it's only gotten worse

I was right in the edge of Gen Z and Millennial and grew up being the family’s tech kid. It still astounds me now that my younger sisters don’t know how to even look for solutions. They just get me. Having moved out I get texts and calls sometimes. I’ve had to explain that using a computer is a skill that is learnable. I didn’t learn by going to someone else. I had to learn how to learn. That’s the skill we should be teaching kids. Not how to solve the problems, but how to FIND the solution to problems.

I’m going to go against the grain a bit here - while there were some nuggets of truth, there was also a lot of insufferable behavior from someone who’s job it was to teach technology to people who don’t know technology. This person recounted so many great teaching moments in such a dismissive way, it just made me sad.

I absolutely get how frustrating it can be to work in customer-facing technical roles, and to get dismissed for it. But if one of my customers was smart enough to embed a YouTube video in a PowerPoint slide, they’re smart enough to understand when I say “it looks like PowerPoint is trying to load it from YouTube every time you hit play, but YouTube is blocked on our network. Let’s think through some other options”. Not only that, it’s critical information the next time they want to present a video, and it’s information they can share with others around them too.

Man, I didn't realize that article was written in 2013, it could've been written today, and it still would've been true. I think one of the biggest contributions to the tech illiteracy of people is, 1. Schools don't really teach you about that kind of stuff (in my experience, or unless you take a special course) and 2. Everything is basically done for you now, its incredibly easy to do anything basic on computers.

I was showing an intern how to install a software the intern needed. The computer setup was a laptop with two external monitors. After we installed the software from one of the external monitors, the intern asked “so will this install the software in the other screen?” I was flabbergasted.

I'm pushing 50 and when people ask me how I know so much about computers, my first comment is that I had to program my first computer for it to do anything.

My second is that I actively sought to learn, and you can too.

Later in life Linux played a huge role in understanding how these contraptions work. Ironically, I'm a human factors engineer, so I'm also guilty of creating part of the problem. User interfaces that "just work"... Until they don't.

I am 28 and i have always thought that the as long as you know how to operate a search engine you can find out what you need. The reason computer people know computers better than you do is because computer people can use a search engine better than you

...and the blog owner can't use Let's Encrypt.

I love how everyone is acting like this is a new thing. People have never been able to use computers.

My wife and I were just talking about this the other day.
I'm not in IT but I work as an industrial maintenance electrician, and knowing how computers work solves more problems than people realize!

Website: coding2learn

http site only

Lmao

They even know how to use Word and PowerPoint and Excel

Oh how poorly has this sentence aged in the last 10 years. There's another nice article about this phenomenom of kids not understanding folder structure here.

Back in uni I was the smart guy whom everyone would ask for help, both with tech and non-tech issues:

"Hey nudny ekscentryk, my phone won't connect to the campus WiFi". Oh yeah that happens I said, you probably didn't fill in the login credentials correctly. This was actually rather tricky, because it used your.student.ID@separate.uni.subdomain.edu for logging in and required changing the default password at least once since registering, for database reasons I guess. They tried it, didn't work. Are you sure you know your password? No, they don't. Let's check in their password manager. They have an iPhone, which I haven't used since I indefinitely switched to Android a couple years back. Took me 20 seconds to find the password manager in Settings though. The password is not there. "Oh you mean my university password? It's in my notes". We go to Notes app. There's nothing here, do you use Evernote or something else entirely for that?. They use a fucking Google Docs document for notes. It's not very handy is it? Like you have to zoom in to edit, it's all clumsy because it's a document and the text's formatted weirdly. Not a problem to them, because "well at least it syncs so I can access it from my iPad." Okay, whatever. It's not like your built-in iOS password manager doesn't sync. We managed to connect to the WiFi network. "could you also do that for the WiFi in the other building?". But it's the same network, it will connect automatically to either. They know better: "nah it can't be, the range is too far". I explain it's not the same hotspot but the credentials are shared and in fact since it's eduroam, a global network, it will work in pretty much any university campus in the world automatically. "wow that is crazy, will that also work for my iPad". Well if you log in with the same credentials. "could you do it for me? i'll fetch my iPad". No, I've shown you how to do it, you can do it yourself now. They can't use a computer.

A different time I was proofreading a classmate's thesis, see quadruple x's next to each heading. hey, what's up with these? I ask her, she replies: "oh I put them here so I can easily find each heading when formatting text. If I make any changes I can just search for <xxxx>" and it will automatically let me go through all headings easily without scrolling manually :)". I open the Navigator (I use LO Writer) and it's empty. She wrote an 80-page document without ever using Styles. All headings, title page etc. were formatted manually. I enable the Formatting Marks. Holy shit. She uses spaces and tabs to move text around. Loads of line breaks to move text to the next page. I could tell the document looks off but I never though this was due to so poor editing skills. Or rather lack thereof. You know you're doing everything the hard way here?. "What do you mean?". There are tools for all that you've done here. Like you can use Styles to mark headings and then edit them in bulk. You can add automatic numbering, which will later let you create an index within a second. To move next to the next page you can use page breaks. "Okay cool but this is how I do it". Alright, then you are just giving yourself extra work, what's the point of not doing this correctly once and then never bothering with formatting ever again?. "Could you do it for me?". I can show you all these tools but I won't be doing that for you, as I'm already proofreading your paper factually. "Okay whatever". Guess what, she never bothered and when handing it the finished paper (probably around 120 pages), her instructor made her do it anyway. She asked me to help her with that. I said no, because I offered help before and she didn't bother. After submitting the paper, the reviewer returned it and made her re-do all citations in an, at least, consecutive style. "Oh fuck that guy why would he give me so much work!? You know how many hours it took me to insert all these in here.". It was around 280 citations total, out of 30 different pieces of writing. She obviously did all of them manually by typing out footnotes. You know there are bibliography managers which do it automatically in a consecutive style for you?. "Will it automatically fix what he asks?". Well, no, because (again) you originally did it incorrectly. This one issue was even stranger for me than her not using styles for formatting: one year later we both attended a "methodology of scientific publishing" class, where they introduced us to Google Scholar, Zotero, Impact Factor and other stuff she could use now. We even had a take-home project to create a bibliography in Zotero and she did it (with online help). But she didn't bother to retain it in her skillset, so when needing to actually apply that skill, she wasn't even aware this was exactly what she learned a year earlier. Crazy; she can't use a computer.

Im a 6th semester software engineer student, back in first semester I had classmates that didn't even know how to zip a folder

At my job I have to explain to fully grown adults where the Start menu is on a regular basis.

https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/

Students don't know what files and folders are, professors say A whole generation has grown up with powerful search functions, and don't think about computers the same way.

Apparently this has become a widespread problem in colleges starting in the last decade.

Computers, math, cooking, cleaning, exercise, eating properly.

It's just another in a long list of things that some grown-ass adults act like is somehow beyond them because that's easier than trying.

Definitely not unique to any generation.

• Dump on tl;drs
• Subject your readers to a minimally-edited 4000 word rant

You get to pick one.

There seems to be a lack of good basic computer science education unfortunately. Schools and so on never caught up with the speed of technological advance. And back when I was in school, teachers taught things like "How do I use formulas in MS Excel" in computer science. It's probably still that way, so it's not neutral at all, instead you're learning how to use specific software products (often, Microsoft's). So relying on school education alone may be hopeless. But you can always learn for yourself or from others.

I'm seeing this with my oldest niece and nephew. They're okay with navigating their android tablets; but if you ask either them of troubleshoot a problem on the PC, they both just end up coming to me. Neither of them know how to research solutions either. Ugh.

TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom". This blog post is not for you.

Well played Blogger. Well played.

she maintains a facade of politeness around them, while inwardly dismissing them as too geeky to interact with

Reeks of “incel” attitude.

Can be generalized to "nobody understands science and technology anymore". I can understand those who went offline and are not looking back.

was teaching my 3yo mouse and keyboard this week, and he had some difficulty because he is already accustomed to touchscreen. to be fair, toddlers touch everything, its intuitive. regardless, he was pointing and clicking like a pro after afer minutes.
now, when to introduce the cli...?

Wow, what a bitter man, he wrote it as spitefully as he could. I wonder what is he so bitter about

No one knows how to use computers! Computers dont even know how to use computers! It's all made up anyways 😅

The Ubuntu Touch reference was a real throwback...

I don't care if most people are clueless around computers, it makes me feel smart.

I was a "Nintendo Switch Engineer" for figuring out over the phone that the AC adapter wasn't plugged in, which is why the TV wasn't displaying from the dock to the screen.

🤓🤓

I remember this article. It's the reason why I now have a laptop prepared and ready to give my son for his fifth birthday.

Lol

This is some "I am very smart and sexy" cringe.