cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27501866
source: @[email protected]
It's the 1% vs the working class, not generation vs generation.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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iiiiiiitttttttttttt
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I teach high school and it's amazing to me how much these kids don't know how to use a computer. They can click a button and get to tik-tok. They read the first answer the AI gives them. That's it.
I keep telling them they should be better at computers than an old lady like me.
Youth bad, hate youth
Haha funny
This is the same rhetoric the Boomers used to keep us down.
Every generation is smarter than the last, us millennials need to learn to cope without ageist propaganda.
I'm not a millenial, I'm a part of gen z.
A high amount of this generation is hopeless when it comes to tech. There is outliers and exceptions, but as a whole, tech literacy has gone down.
I'm a millennial computer scientist
This is literally propaganda
This is the exact same as boomers thinking they are superior to millennials for knowing how to drive stick shift or write cursive.
But both cursive and manual stick shift (at least in the USA) are being used less and less, but computers are being used more, while literacy goes down.
I think it has to do with barrier of entry. Way back in the day, you had to be quite the hacker to operate a computer (say Amiga or ZX Spectrum). Then, with Windows XP (or 98), it became easier to operate one, but some tasks still required clever ways to solve. Fast forward to now, all you have to do is click one icon at the bottom bar, write what you want in the top bar, and you got a billion answers.
Most of the stuff I learned was because the path to successfully perform stuff required knowing lots of different stuff.
For context, first PC was Win 98 when I was 7, born 1996.
At the very least, your generation has the ability to eventually learn tech usage. Its not too late like it is for boomers.
I've had a not insignificant amount of people who don't want to learn how to. Boomers can learn how to. I love showing old people how to use google lens.
I've long said that I believe Millennials, as a generational cohort, are the best at typing that ever has been and ever will be. We were the first generation where adults really recognized that we'd be using computers our entire lives and took steps to teach typing. But, so much more importantly than that, we socialized through typing. I had typing classes in school, sure, but I learned to type quickly on AIM and in chat rooms.
Earlier generations only really typed for business or school. Later generations socialize over phones, so they, too, only use a physical keyboard for school and business.
I guess I should amend this theory to include all tech literacy in general.
There wasn't voice Chat in early games and you had to type fast to communicate and not die.
Typing was taught to boomers and genx first dude. In fact, as a liminal i'd readily say i've had an arseload more typing "teaching" than you have - both keyboard and typewriter- and i'll wager my mother in the age of typewriters had even more.
I took typing class in high school. On a typewriter. Gen X. My mom was a trained stenographer in her younger years.
X here as well. But 78. So i got to take advantage of the digital age without having my teen stupidity immortalised on it. Truly the sweetest of spots.
I am a bit older but similar. My dad was an early adopter of computers even though he had zero idea how to use one.
The typewriter generation are probably faster overall because they don't make mistakes.
Being able to delete any error makes you far less careful.
Sure, modern programs will autocorrect for you, but autocorrect to what?
Yeah, it was funny teaching my grandmother to use a computer... She couldn't use a mouse, but she typed really fast!
As a Zoomer, I also had typing classes, but I learned how to type because I wanted to be able to quickly send messages in Minecraft when I was like 7 years old 🙃
I write a lot on my keyboard, and have been for a long time. But my left hand is not on SDF but on AWD because that's the default hand position for gaming/shooters. 😬
Doesn't stop me from typing fast or blind though. Otherwise I would have done something about it.
I didn't teach my older zoomer kid to type. He learned on his own out of the necessity of chatting with friends in online games, played on his computer. He uses the first two fingers of both hands, and he's faster than me, who learned in school and has been a touch-typist for 40 years.
I think we're moving away from keyboard and mouse, anyway. It will be AR headsets with voice, eye tracking, and hand gestures for most use, and keyboards will be used only when direct input is needed.
To be fair, PDFs suck and the only software that handles them well is paid and proprietary
Libreoffice is pretty decent with PDFs imo
From my experience, not very much, at least for editing PDFs without fucking up the fonts
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