#genzskillgap surprises a lot of people! Not generalizing about all of #genz just trying to explain where I think the gap is! #corporate #technology #corporatemillennial
I think a lot of kids are growing up without using real computers. They know how to use a phone or a tablet, but how to organize file folders and such…it’s not hard to learn but it’s strange.
I blame Apple. They designed their mobile devices to lack file managers and normal computer functionality. Parents get these devices for their kids. No wonder they can't use a computer. Parents should get their kids a rooted Android tablet if they must buy their kids this type of device, though a Linux computer would be best.
So, I will say that there are folks who have come up using search rather than file hierarchies, and that's not necessarily bad, given the advances in search capabilities. I hotkey search for everything these days, rather than navigating file hierarchies, unless I absolutely have to.
My wife is fighting her mom over this right now. They want to get our kids ipads. Our oldest is 3. We aren't against technology we love it but we want to control the rate of introduction. We want to use computer's and gaming consoles first and integrate phones and tablets later.
To be fair they also didn't grow up in a world where paper was the primary means of storing, transmitting, and sharing information. So digital abstractions that depend on your understanding of that approach to things may not make as much sense to them.
@@aaronagostini7377 search isn't bad, but having search replace the filesystem entirely is the problem. Ease of use isn't the problem, restricting what you are able to do is the problem.
as gen z i used windows xp and vista when i was very young and then windows 7 and 8 when i was a bit older, but i also had an ipod touch and a shitty android tablet and graduated to iphone as a teenager, so while i do feel like i got both of the Gen Z Digital Experiences(tm) i still cannot fathom how people my age have ONLY EVER used phones and tablets. like a computer is literally just a household item to me like a shower or a fridge and not having one is as weird to me as not having one of those
As another gen z yeah i rmb using window xp, then figuring out how to install window 7 on my family computer when window xp support ended, while using a crap phone that could barely watch youtube, im honestly surprised that other gen z can be tech illiterate, considering how much me and my friends had to fiddle with our pcs and laptops to play lan games with each other, and im not a old gen z either, i was born in 2008
@@wongvieian1694 oh really?? damn, i was born in 2003 and i thought i totally missed the LAN era lmao though come to think of it i did have to do a lot of fiddling with like, port forwarding and watching youtube videos about logmein hamachi to try and get gmod and minecraft servers set up, so i’m not unfamiliar with having to do weird network stuff to play private multiplayer games with friends but yeah, it is absolutely wild that some people in our generation have never had to do any of the shit we have, even moreso considering you’re closer to the tail end of it. i guess 5 years isn’t a super long time but i still figured i wouldve had completely different experiences with tech growing up than someone born in 2008, so it’s surprising hearing something so familiar lmao
kinda similar experience! im 2007 but also a child of a microsoft employee living in the founding city of microsoft. my first tablet was an asus(?), then my dad got me the very first surface tablet with windows 8, and a windows 10 laptop when i was 9. in elementary we had computer classes on windows 7(?), and starting 4th grade we got school issued windows 10 laptops with typing lessons. my first two phones were a huawei and a google pixel, and only at 13, after lots of peer pressure, did i get an iphone. i did also get an ipad for drawing when i was 11. now i am back to android with a samsung phone. grew up absolutely surrounded by tech from all sides of my life, also with both of the Gen Z Digital Experiences(tm).
nah you definitely do have little in common with most 07/08 kids. me and the person you replied to are definitely outliers. hell, i entered elementary school the year windows 8 came out. xp is a very rare experience for people our age
@@synkronized that’s really interesting! it does make sense that yall are outliers but i am glad these kinds of experiences still exist in some way also on the subject of xp. i definitely experienced it enough to be familiar with how it worked, but i was so young that the memories are ephemeral and dreamlike, which is actually kinda perfect those for old microsoft OSes lol
I might be in the older side of GenZ so I do not actually know what the younger ones are going thru cause I can hardly believe someone my generation doesnt know how to make a word to PDF when that was the bread & butter of the end of highschool and all of college for assignments and the like. Attaching a file to an email seems extremely trivial, I guess they expected a cloud google doc that can be modified by multiple people simultaneously or something... When I think about knowing "Tech" I believe its still the same divide of those who dare go into the "control panel" and those who dont, I dont even consider myself knowledgable in tech (I dont mess with the "cmd" and dealing with printers is half sorcery half science) and I am technically the "IT guy" at work
I hold degrees in software and electronics and once combed the registry for 2 whole days to fix a Python multiple-version-installation-problem on my work computer (long story), but I don't consider myself a tech wizard. I don't grep and I hate powershell. Most tasks are performed so infrequently that it doesn't make sense to automate them. I occasionally use a macro in Excel. 🤷🏻♂️
Not everyone grew up in your school or neighborhood, not everyone was put into a school district rich or talented enough to teach children how to use computers. Personally my school only cared about how to type and run microsoft word for english classes. When it came to file organization, converting files, etc. I've had to learn it on my own, which I got an advantage on since I grew up with a home computer always at my side. The rest of the people in my school I can't say the same. This is all a result of high expectations of humanity and people doing their job correctly, many places are poor and cannot afford computer related classes that are valuable. Many people don't even own a computer. The masses of people in every generation are not clever.
I’m solidly gen z (2005), I can say that everyone I know knows how to upload files onto an email because we constantly had to do that in school (a bit less in high school but still). Converting word documents to pdfs I don’t know how people are doing but I feel like most could easily figure it out because it’s really not that hard, but we never had to do it in school because the teachers preferred the word type to be able to correct our assignments easier. And I’ve rarely touched the control panel because I have no idea what I’m doing lol. We didn’t even learn how to type at my school, only learned the basic word and excel stuff in middle school which we then proceeded to forget because we barely used the programs
@@albaaviles7148 To convert to pdf, you do: FILE > Export to pdf It's a dropdown option. Should take about 3 seconds once you find the button. If you want to be fancy there's TeX (e.g. pdftex, pdflatex for scientific publishing.
This echoes my own experience as a just-retired boomer having spent all my working life around IT. My career has spanned the entire growth of desktop computing since it started, as a software creator, tech support and later simply as an IT user sharing skills and knowledge with younger people who appeared unable to solve problems, knowing that I had forgotten more than they would ever learn.
I've been working in tech support for over 20 years and can absolutely confirm. People who don't know technology themselves commonly say things like "kids are so good with technology" but it's only the shallowest surface level knowledge. Most of the Gen Z at my work are probably great at texting and using whatever the current popular apps are but they have *awful* troubleshooting and direction-following skills. The instant something isn't going as they expect, they just shut down. No critical thinking applied, not even reading what the unexpected pop-up says, just freeze and ask for help. Send them instructions that are more than 3 steps long and don't have pictures and most will ask you to do it for them. Giving instructions verbally can be even more frustrating.
This is pretty much the real-life scenario I feared, confirmed: Born 1996 myself, I feel like a young pup who managed to dig under fences and pop thru narrow spaces of walls With a touch of brain and hands-on application... ...Before these narrow ways around Got shut completely. Said another way... As I watched there exist apps for TODDLERS... ...I feared human imagination would just... ...Practically become a thing of the past. I see they are innocent victims of like, parents just putting them on toddler-friendly ipad program but... ...I already have a big problem with the stupidity and lack of thinking that's in the world anyways, That ISN'T from technology like this scenario exactly, But from just... ...Not having one inch of self-awareness in their personal behavior to connect the dots a bit Realize something more than 2 + 2 = 4... Maybe I can't get angry at people who were never taught how to think critically, resourcefully and creatively. But I get very angry at those who don't even TRY. They let bad behavior be covered up with excuses and blame-shifting, Instead of taking one minute to analyze themselves And connect the dots between what it is they're doing, why, And what they would ACTUALLY maybe like to acheive, Beyond petty malice. >.
"Awful troubleshooting and direction-following skills" absolutely hits the nail on the head. I've seen this with new hires a lot. But I've been wondering about the reason for it, though--why isn't 'find out what's wrong and see if I can do something' the next step when something really does go wrong? And when the solution is genuinely beyond your ability and you're receiving help from a professional, why is it hard to do exactly as instructed? Is it a comprehension issue?
@@ExperimentalSDWH On the one hand, yeah, giving toddlers that type of modern tech is a terrible idea. On the other hand, I first got access to a computer when I was 4, but it was an actual computer, that ran Windows XP, not a locked-down simplified i-thing. And I handled it fine, I had to if I wanted to do anything cool with it. So some toddlers can be given tech, just as long as it's something they have to actually figure out and troubleshoot, not a slick modern UI with a touchscreen and graphical buttons that just work.
@@katanah3195 Hey fun fact, I relate because I too was playing on one of those boxy computers when I was 3 or 4 :D I feel I am on the same wavelength as you; if you give a small child a computer or device that encourages them to engage and think, then this too can go towards developing imagination and creative, critical thinking. But if it's nothing more than pressing buttons but no - to - little thinking involved, then yes, I maintain my worry ^.^; I'm also told the story that I dumped Baby Powder onto the computer and its keyboard? So the computer guy made the screensaver display a message of: "Baby Powder Is Bad!" 😂 and I know the games I loved to play on the computer... remembering Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, Blues' Clues, even a couple of Winnie The Pooh ones... there was ample room to think about what I was doing, WHY I was doing it, and what I hoped to achieve! So yea, thank you for pointing this out and jogging my own memory of my early-life computer exposure ^.^
@ExperimentalSDWH Omg yes, Pooh Bear games! Those were the best. I think I have the Pajama Sam games in my old CD holder from back then but I don't remember playing them. Did you ever play Reader Rabbit? That was almost as good as the Pooh Bear ones. Yeah, maybe now looking back everything just works and those who came before us had to know a lot more to get things working, but it was definitely more difficult than it is today, or at least had more steps and you had to read and follow instructions, and thank goodness for that!
We recently updated our systems. I was worried and started to learn on my own. The complete trust and reliance on the company to teach you the new skills is creepy. If somebody doesn't tell them the exact steps, they fail and just sit there. They are smarter than I, but somehow lack the spirit to fail forward.
This is wild to me as a gen z guy with a degree in computer science. In my experience I'm used to people my age knowing what they're doing with computers, but obviously my experience is skewed by being around the people that take the time to learn these things.
Think it just depends. There are crazy things I’ve seen developers do that I could never dream of doing. Hand me an excel file I’m a complete noob. But people look amazed when they see me working in Figma and other design tools. I find that I’m also quick to experiment and adapt to new technology and systems. Yet writing an email is nerve wracking and I’m still shit at excel. Other ppl I know my age probably would be awkward on a computer because they use an iPad or tablet. I think ppl just need to stop assuming what is common or basic knowledge. Cause if I spent 4 years in school for Design and Innovation is it really odd that I don’t know how to use Excel 😂
Wht I find interesting is I grew up on Nintendo consoles computers Apple devices and some other stuff and if u ask me to navigate a current apple device I'm stumped, ik how it used to be back in 2016 but I've been using Android since and goddam does Apple seemingly make it more awkward to get to the stuff I want
@@tinysailorexactly, hand me adobe illustrator or Indesign and I will have no problems because I’ve been using them a lot for the past year and a half. But as much as I used the Microsoft programs in school I’ve never understood excel (and never really used it), I forgot how to do quite a few things in word and power point just seems the opposite of intuitive to me now. I feel like I’ve regressed lol
This makes sense w/the pandemic too. It's amazing that kids are learning photo and video editing skills but struggle with emails and typing and file types. Schools have also been struggling in the biggest ways too 😩
I dealt with two millennial guys from Uganda and was so frustrated that they had no idea how to fill a PDF out. As a millennial myself, I was shocked by going to college that most Computer Science majors never built a computer, but I have.
You know, that actually explains a lot. It's one of my biggest frustrations with my co-workers that they rely so heavily on me to figure out why our ancient system is doing what it's doing. Some days it really feels like I'm dealing with my Boomer mother. Notably, this is only really a problem with the ppl that either haven't had a job before this one, their previous jobs didn't involve using older tech, or their previous jobs didn't involve them being in the store by themselves (there was always someone there to handle the problems for them). They're also fresh out of high school so they haven't had the experience of going to college either. Edit: They did have typing lessons at their high school. They apparently didn't bother paying that much attention cuz they still can't type very well.
i'm 20 and my brother is 16. the tech literacy gap between us is WILD. i know how to dive in and troubleshoot when i encounter a problem, or i can at least look it up. meanwhile, i have to remember my brother's discord password for him or else he'll forget it. he's a smart kid, but i was more tech literate at his age. granted, i have a passing interest in technology, but this drastic of a difference in such a short period of time is concerning.
When I first got into my field after college, I was a rockstar in the office since a lot of my colleagues didn’t really know simple IT things. Need the printer fix but don’t wanna call IT? I gotcha. In fact, my first big break that lead to bigger projects and more responsibilities was leading an effort to digitize all plant schematics. Apparently people find file organization and creating naming standards difficult. I’m in the power industry, with an aging workforce at the time. 10 yrs later I’m seeing the same thing with new younger hires. 🤦🏾♂️
As the oldest of gen z (right on the cusp) my opinion is that it all depends how terminally online you were as a kid. ie. Gamers are likely more proficient than the kids that just used their iPhone for social media. Growing up with Minecraft taught me a lot of skills just to play with my friends, installing mods etc, not to mention I started really using the computer to game at about 10 and games like maplestory etc had to be installed a certain way. You kinda had to learn how to pick things up on mid to late 2000s internet
The problem of educating current tech to younger kids is that when they grow up, technology problem will have leapt another generation. Teaching them troubleshooting skills is the right answer. Struggle based learning is a thing.
There was this young gentleman I met who is still in high school. He's currently volunteering for the summer around a church that I support. We do their IT, when I got him his wonk station I asked him "You know how to use Microsoft Office, right?" He said no and I was dumb founded. I'm 33 years old and I remember being taught how to use Microsoft Office in elementary, middle and high school. What on earth is going on in the public schools?
Am a millennial with a Gen Z sibling. When we were younger it baffled me that he never had a computer class in elementary school and didn’t even know what windows office was. How were they skipping these fundamental computer literacy learning steps??
As an older millennial that moved every few years during my early education, I never had any computer or typing classes. My dad loves computers so we always had one (even when it was super uncommon) and I taught myself everything I needed to know. I only assumed Gen Z would be better because I thought they all got actual computer classes. I know most people even my age did I think I just missed it by moving. I graduated highschool in 2004, Google had just gone public but I didn't know about it until I started college. When I wanted to know something I had Encyclopedia software on my computer to search through. 😂 It really bothers me that Gen Z and Alphas asks endless questions that were either answered in the video/article, description, pinned comment, or even the title itself. It really feels like they have no drive to learn anything. They just want to be told or have things explained in depth to them. In my field (nursing) it's really scary.
I do find it’s all generations, not just Gen Z. For example, how to schedule Teams meetings or send an invitation through Outlook checking scheduling for conflicts. Some people have just avoided doing these things or never got the opportunity and so you get a lot of invitations where everyone has conflicts and can’t attend.
I am Gen-Z, and work as an Automation Engineer and I have had the opposite experience. Myself and another coworker my age are very tech-literate, and are much more versed than our older peers. Even when it comes to working with older technologies, a lot of the differences are easy to understand because of our knowledge about current computers, electrical equipment, systems, etc. My entire job is troubleshooting problems, diagnosing what is causing them, and how to solve them, and I don’t feel like I’m at a disadvantage compared to others on my team. If anything, we are able to use the knowledge recorded by our mentors to solve problems faster and easier, as well as to innovate on previous solutions. Lastly, I did have keyboarding classes and computer-centric classes in highschool, they are still taught, but it depends on where in the US/world you are.
Literally any of them that use those things? If you grow up around it and use it regularly, it’s not hard to learn about it just by virtue of using it? Do you just have a blanket idea of what Gen-Z is like and can’t be open to the idea you may be wrong?
@@wiziek Most people around my age bracket(I'm GenZ) that I know are pretty damn tech literate(Although they usually had computers since they were kids). Although, not to a very high level but enough to function pretty well. I would consider myself to be highly tech literate, although more on the Operations side(System administration, networking etc.) and not too much dev. Also, looking to get into AI. But I am from South Asia(not India), so that could be an important distinction.
Gen z here and it’s very odd experience looking at jobs I don’t feel comfortable applying to because I have absolutely zero idea of how exel and Microsoft works but at my current job I’ve shown my 50 year old manager how to close out the apps on our work iPad I don’t even know how many times now. I have gotten pretty good at looking up RU-vid videos on how to restart our pinpad and scanner but when the printer isn’t working I have no clue how to troubleshoot after like checking if it’s out of paper 😳 I also didn’t have a typing class until i did GED classes and even then it wasn’t a like class that only did typing it was my language arts teacher deciding to spend 2 days focusing on it after watching the class struggle with typing and the computers in general
Do they even have computer class and literacy as apart of their curriculum? Since elementary they put us in computer labs and showed us how to do basic tasks, how to search and save files, how to use Microsoft word, how to properly turn off and shut down a comouter and it only got more sophisticated as I got older.
This seems more like the gap between people who are curious self learners and those who want to be spoon fed information. Ive learned more from youtube than any classroom, and that should be the same for anyone who grew up with YT around
Kids are being raised on closed environments like those provided by iOS. You can't tinker or experiement with these operating systems because they're designed to prevent it. So kids don't learn how to bend and break the rules, find hacks and efficiencies etc. They don't even learn how to troubleshoot basic technology issues because iPads and iPhones don't let you. My first steps in IT were learning how to get Tomb Raider working on my Windows 95 PC when it wouldn't work as a kid. Now everything technology wise is spoonfed and if it doesn't work immediately they move on. Working in IT you see LOTS of younger people now who will not even attempt the most basic troubleshooting steps before running to us.
Is it possible that Gen Z is just what all future generations look like? So many millennials had such a unique relation to technology growing up, that I don't know it's fair for us to expect future generations to be the same. Back when we grew up, we had to work harder anything out of our tech. We didn't have youtube, Wikipedia, and someone millenials were almost done high school before Google was even a thing. We certainly didn't have anything as simple to use as an iPad. My theory is that this breeds a certain mindset towards learning new things, one that no other generation will be able replicate until there's an entirely new wave of game changing technology.
It's a shame, but even my dad who's a boomer knows ctrl+c, ctrl+v, how to format a pen drive and etc. I can't understand how a younger digital generation could fuck up this bad. You gen z guys really makes me believe we live in Idiocracy world.
Theres also a lot of software that dont aren't user friendly in general and i blame it on companies buting the cheaper poorly designed program rather than buy something a little more pricey and that works better.
Technology is a language and just because you grow up speaking the language doesn't mean you understand the nuts and bolts of the language. That's why we have phonetics and English grammar lessons in school to understand how to read and write in a language most of us have been surrounded by since birth.
Parental failure right here. I raised my kids to know how to use and fix tech. Every time there was a problem I made them watch how I fixed it. Once I had shown how to solve a particular issue three times I'd then watch and guide them in fixing similar issues until they built the skills for themselves. I think that even most of the parents of the generations you're saying have these skills because they grew up along side the tech actually don't have these skills either. I work in a tech company and I'm unpleasantly surprised daily by people across the generational spectrum who are extremely tech-illiterate. It's bad when the "mentors" can't teach their juniors anything because they're no better. And let's not even talk about how many general questions come across my desk that a 30 second Google search would have answered without wasting everyone's time.
The expectation on us gen z, specially the younger ones honestly is like how they see compute programmers. As someone who's majoring in soft engineering now, and used to tinker with software a lot. I get told to come fix tech often where I have to tell them I don't do hardware! Just cause I know how to opporate software doesn't mean I'm good with fixing mechanical stuff. I can look up a RU-vid video for you tho. Or get you a hardware student, from the electrical engineer majors. 😑
very accurate, I see a lot of employees with companies I work with just avoiding email and Microsoft suite entirely and just refer to WhatsApp, like really? 😂 We are not in a group chat, we need to use email so that multiple people know what's going on and have access to that information
@ Any fellow Gen Z-er looking into getting better at tech literacy: Install custom firmware onto a Wii or 3DS, it's easy as hell if you know how to use the folder and web browser functions on a computer, and only requires an SD card, did it for my 3DS on my old slow dinky laptop in 20 minutes.
Parentssince boomer times have been terrible at passing down skills. Funny thing I've noticed as a millenial in my job is that practically noone can use excel properly. It appears to be nothing to do with age either.
MY STUDENT: I wrote the assignment but now I can’t find it. ME THEIR TEACHER: Where did you save it in your Google Drive? STUDENT: What do you mean? ME, going through their Google drive that has no folders, only an endless list of files named “Untitled document”.
Technology is much, much more complex these days. An 8-bit CPU would be covered by 20 pages in a book, these days Intel's documentation fills a shelf...
This is quite accurate. Gen Z is tech-friendly and that's not the same thing as being tech-literate or even tech-savvy. While boomers are usually tech-adverse, it varies a lot.
I'm a Gen X who teaches digital media to Gen Z college students. I find them to be a very mixed bag. Some are tech wizards and some are technophobes. I make a point of starting each course by telling them about my experience as a kid first learning to code Basic on a Commodore 64 in the eighties and having to know coding just to load and play a video game. My point is that things have changed so much since then, and things will no doubt be just as different forty years from now. Change is the only constant with technology, so they will have to learn how to learn new skills on their own.
@@whatisahandle221 Humanity was going to be different 1,000,000 years from now regardless of outside intervention like AI. Evolution takes its natural course over time. AI will accelerate the process no doubt, will it “end” humanity? Yes and no. We were always going to become something different or die out. Maybe future generation won’t be homo sapiens, but something else. Weird to think about, but not surprising.
I don't think it has much to do with generations as much as it have to do with the individual humans and their life experiences just like you said, im gen-z my self and always was very tech-savvy because if i wanted to do something i'd research it and do it my self, a lot of people just aren't like that probably because 1. For XYZ reasons they learned to avoid friction and 2. Some think they are not going to understand it anyway so they don't even make a genuine attempt to. There's probably more reasons than those two but they seem to be a common denominator for that group of people, its like Learned-Helplessness for Tech but it probably extends to more in their life than just Tech.
I'm an older millennial that went to community college as a non-traditional student later in life. At one point, I was working with an 18 year old Gen Z student on a large project, and was asking her to open up a file, and it turned out she had never encountered the concept of file locations or directories and how to navigate them. I guess she probably grew up using phones, tablets, and Macs that just served up files of the relevant type. But it took like three minutes to even understand what the disconnect was because she didn't have to vocabulary to tell me what she didn't understand. This was a relatively smart girl who was very online, but always using a phone. This was also like six years ago. I'd expect the problem is just getting worse.
That happens at the college I work at all the time. The help desk constantly has requests like 'please help me find my document'. I find they didn't even have Macs. They had Chromebooks for school and tablets/phones at home. 18 year old today were born in 2006 and were 10 in 2016. Those devices handled all the tasks they required in 2016.
@@thinking7667 So I went to a huge state school right out of high school for a year and a half before I had to leave abruptly for a life-threatening health reason. I was 30 before I was well enough to enroll in classes again, and I went to my local community college. Best decision I ever made, I loved being in the diverse, sometimes ecclectic set of folks who end up in community college. There was a very different energy to that crowd compared to a big four year university where nearly everyone is just kind of there because they're supposed to be there. No judgment, that had included me when I was 18. At community college, I found lots of folks from all walks of life who actively wanted to be there and were motivated by all sorts of different circumstances. This is also where I met the girl in my comment, who was a friend of mine. I got my associate's of science in biology and transferred to a small liberal arts school where I finished a BS in chemistry (much to my own surprise). I also studied a lot of biology and philosophy during my time there. I liked my university, but again, it was a very different energy amongst mostly people directly out of high school and still figuring things out. I can't recommend community college highly enough for the sort of people you will find there, regardless of when or why you're continuing your education.
@JeffCaplan313 What is the problem though? Kids not knowing PC/Macs or businesses not moving onto the kids grew up with? With so many things being so cloud based now and smart devices being so powerful, many tasks could be done with a more open approach to hardware. Personally, I think something like Samsung Dex would be invaluable to a business that required it's staff to have a work phone, desktop and laptop because one device could be all three.
Knowing which search terms to type into google to troubleshoot something, and then knowing which results are going to be helpful is a surprisingly rare/useful skill.
Being a Millennial really does feel like the golden age to watch it all change. Grew up with that dog awful dial up internet sounds and needing to learn how to play with the big tech updates like computers and videogames as they were being widely adopted into the mainstream. Young enough to still feel dialed in to the changes that are still happening. Wondering if the singularity will change humanity before I die. What a time to be alive.
That’s been my experience. Most people I know don’t own a computer or printer and call me up to use mine. Many people don’t even bother googling things, they just call me.
@@estyckiI can understand not owning a printer. Other than updated insurance paperwork to keep in the car (which isn't even necessary these days, they usually will accept digital proof), I can go years without needing to print something. By the time I need to the ink has dried out or it's clogged up, etc. Plus the printer companies are evil about overcharging for ink and not accepting any but their own special ink/cartridges so you can't even do the cheap refills like you used to.. I got rid of mine a long time ago. I wouldn't mind a scanner though, maybe one of those portable ones.
BINGO. When this is all you've learned to do, you don't ask how to make your own pellet or even where the pellets come from or even whether there exists some other form of edification.
Yep. Don't give your kids a shitty chromebook or worse, an Ipad. Give them a windows Laptop/tablet or even better, make them install Arch Linux and figure it out. Either they will be a tech wizzard, Will love sports and be super in shape being always outside, or will developp good enough social skills to be at their friends house to use their Shitty Ipad.
Best reply here ☝🏻. This is so true. I'm celebrating 39 years in technology this year, and I'm stunned at the lack of basic technology skills most people under 40 have considering it was more accessible while they were growing up versus what I had access to.
@@aeri_taylors-version And the best part is, the kid was glued to his iPhone. I was like "It's the operating system that the apple computers run on, you know, the people who make your phone?" -- deer in the headlights.
Do not forget weaponized incompetence on workplace too. I had people of all ages around me doing it. My mother is 67, I am 36. She "can't understand" how a microwave works. But give her a new mobile and she will dissect and learn how the thing works in a matter of hours. That's because of her interests, not her generation 💁🏻♀️
This is incredibly accurate, as the technician of the family it annoys me to no end how much my sisyer refuses to learn how to operate our printer. Youre a teacher you need to print stuff, learn it. She claimed she couldn't until i moved out for work last year qnd voila she can use it fine now.
That also sounds like neurodivergence. Interest based learning is huge among people with ADHD. It’s hard to stick with something when it’s not just that it’s boring or uninteresting, but your brain is actively working against you to stick with the task. Older people are so much less likely to be diagnosed and treated for it as well.
When the COVID hit, my parents got really scared that they'll die alone in a hospital. Later they've asked me to buy them smartphones (first in their life) and to my surprise, they've learned how to operate them really fast. Basic stuff, like check weather, print document, video call to grand children, take a photo and send it to their friends. I was shocked. For context, they were 70+ at the time
That’s my mom, she hit 60 and suddenly a shit ton of tasks she did her entire life needed help…. like she put herself in the mindset of “I’m old and don’t get it” and refuses to budge on it.
You would never have felt compelled to dig and figure things out, if as a kid you'd never had to use context clues and/or always had your next piece of information fed to you. Even just the exercise as a kid of watching TV shows that are meant for adults and figuring out what the big words mean or looking at the ingredients for dinner and guessing what's being made... For the average modern kid, there's not much need to use daily analytical skills and that translates to not being able to even want/need an answer let alone formulate a question and attempt to answer it yourself.
This is the genX mindset. We were told to go outside and play, and don't come back till the street lights came on. We walked to school in kindergarten. We were expected to just figure things out on our own, and we learned troubleshooting and critical thinking skills that way. With all the "easy buttons" available to kids since the 2000's, they don't have to work for their information anymore.
You underestimate how agressively anti-user a lot of technology now is. You have to dig into the settings to turn OFF all the automatic features that lock you into the manufacturer default settings. You CANNOT teach yourself when the technology itself is designed to prevent you from experimenting.
the easier a software is to use, the less control and power the user has, and the less precise the result is. When it comes to software that is used for entertainment, the priority is not to give the user the opportunity to implement their plans in detail. You want to be entertained without having to overcome major technical hurdles. However, as an engineer you cannot expect to be able to program a production machine or design a component so easily. In the past (1990s) PC games were not so easy to access. You had to know DOS and the games were invented by geeks for people who could read and love to think. There were no marketing experts and game designers at the start. This was by techies for techies
The difficulties we had trying to get games to run under DOS with the low memory limits! Having to mess about trying to squeeze drivers in where they could fit. Kids 20 years ago wouldn't believe you if you told them. Today they wouldn't even understand what you were saying!
@@fuzonzord9301 Consoles weren't the norm back then. Nowadays, 99% of people use some sort of "console", in the form of easy-to-use apps, instant user interfaces, etc. That wasn't the norm back then. Most technology was complex to operate. Nintendo ease-of-use was a rare experience.
Maybe. I was in high school when chromebooks came out and quite a few of my friends were tech wizards trying to cash in on bug bounties. The rest were normal folks who don't even know how to use a search engine properly. I think one issue is that the school ran a dual track program with honors/AP courses being the only classes that taught anything. A-level and lower was just baby sitting. Students had the option of choosing their own classes, but honours enrollment neatly coincided with affluence in most situations. The practical effect being that we have a handful of people who the schools poured all of their resources into, and then we have the other 80-90% of the population.
Then, as if the chromebooks weren't useless enough already, they brick them even harder in fear that the students might do something which could conceivably appear inappropriate. I stopped using mine altogether when they told me I'd have to petition the 2 IT guys who handled the entire school district just to get The Mechanical Universe (free physics videos from CalTech which we watched IN CLASS) whitelisted so I could access it. If those programs are half as bad anywhere else, there was never any point.
Many schools buy iPads in Australia because Apple provides them at a crazy discount. They do this because they want to have the next generation locked in to using their operating systems, I hate the practise and think it should be made illegal.
I remember getting access to chromebooks towards the tail end of school. They were kinda shit but considering so much of the stuff we had was still running XP they were a good internet in a box to put alongside the actual work computer.
I’m 24 and very happy that I grew up in a weird place where typing courses were still a thing and tech was just a little older so you HAD to figure things out. We never used Google classroom stuff in school. The most high-tech stuff were these interactive whiteboards and those only showed up when I got into high school. I feel like a boomer when it comes to teaching my peers how to organise files and like a zoomer when I can’t figure out the words to put into an email to my prof. Conclusion: weird, but I’m glad I grew up like that
I'm in a similar boat. I had the typing classes in middle school, but I also had shit going on in high school and wound up spending an extra THREE years between grades 9-12. I was also transferred to a smaller school halfway through that time, where instead of 300-400 student grade sizes, we had 10-student grade sizes. That second school wound up adopting Chromebooks for every student pretty early on and ahead of the curve because it was such a small school that they could afford to. I remember being in class with fellow students who'd had Chromebooks for a year or two already, shortly after I transferred to the school and had just gotten mine, yet I was already using it much more efficiently than they were. I learned all the keyboard shortcuts very quickly (there's TONS of them), and whenever my younger fellow students saw me using them efficiently I'd get crazy comments. "WHOA HOW DID YOU DO THAT?" Half of the keyboard shortcuts I discovered by accident. I was astonished that seemingly none of them had the necessary skills to diagnose the cause of, for instance, switching tabs, and then deduce that, "oh, three fingers on the trackpad sideways switches Chrome tabs," and then use that knowledge both to implement the shortcut AND to change how they use the trackpad so they stop doing it accidentally. I remember being really confused, frankly, but this video makes sense.
I feel that weirdness. It only started when I realized how different I was compared to the generation I'm in. It's a little isolating to be honest but like, you said, it definitely has its perks.
So glad you took the time to explain this in a non-judgemental way. I'm an elder Gen-Z or baby millennial, depending on who you ask (I was born 1998) and I sorta watched the younger students get access to simpler but more freedom-limited technology as I went through high school. While I appreciated the lower friction for my own use, I was also worried about the effect of "convenience-maxxing" in the design of technology, combined with the shrinking budget for computer programming and engineering classes, on the computer literacy of my juniors. I do hope there's a way out of this, because I see the spark of enthusiasm for tech everywhere, but the lack of access and the opacity of the concepts to someone who didn't grow up learning it are suffocating. I've tried to help by being a wellspring of information to anybody who needs it, and I try to provide bits of fundamental knowledge in a way that doesn't result in over-explaining. I hope it's working.
I've seen people put the cutoff is anywhere between 1990 and 2000 although it's most often 95-97, as a mid 95 kid I never know which side of the fence to sit on, doesn't help that I spent both a lot of time with my older cousins as a young kid and then a lot of time with my younger brother as a teen. I now get to occasionally hang out with my young gen alpha 3 year old niece, let's hope cultural osmosis still works on me, I'm gonna need it in a few years ^^`
@@lavenderoh Don't be sorry! I'm fine with that. I mentioned it because I hear some people put the cutoff at 2000. Many of the people in the 1997-2001 cutoff identify in between, being detached enough from either to have a perspective that sits between both.
Yup. I've trained both Boomers and Zoomers at my job, and the number of times I have encountered Zoomers who can't do basic things like type or copy-paste specific info or identify where to click on a screen is equal to the number of times I've encountered this with Boomers. It makes teaching relatively simple work tasks much more difficult than it was just a few years ago.
I work IT help desk. That definitely tracks for what I've seen. And file explorer may as well not exist for a lot of them. If they save a document and don't know where it saved to, they panic about losing it instead of trying to "save as" and seeing where it's leading to, or running a search for the file name. It's wild.
Where did files save to? This seems intentional by Apple, Microsoft Office 360, Adobe, cloud computing and proprietary apps & files in general: hide the content behind a proprietary curtain so they have to come back and use only your tool.
And philosophers have been saying this for thousands of years. This isn’t a new thought yet it hasnt happened. I bet you can’t create arrow heads out of flint? Oh the humanity.
@@BitTheByte LMFAO yes! I can among many other things. I'll be fine when the button breaks, I'm not to sure about someone that says "They've been saying it for years but it hasn't happened yet" as that's incredibly naive.
@@BitTheByte the difference is we didn't build a society off of arrowheads, we replaced arrow heads with stronger weapons, but now society is built on older technologies that gen Z isn't use to, gen Z is in the bronze age, the bussniess world is in the stone age
I wonder if it could also be tied to GenX and Millenials learning to do a lot of the work the “analog” way, giving them an understanding of what needs to happen for the workplace, house, or whatever location to function. Then, thanks to this intimate understanding of what’s happening, they’re able to see how technology HELPS those things get done because they understand the core task, not just that X program is supposed to do it. I brought my car in for servicing after the recent cyber issues saw dealerships’ systems being shut down. The employees who seemed to have the least trouble were the ones that were able to pull out the old hand-written logbooks they’d learned to use when they started out. They almost reflexively knew what needed to be found, recorded, and done so that the computer’s unavailability to prompt them wasn’t as much of a hurdle.
Semi-related, but I see this at my job. We digitize medical records by scanning old paper records. Scanning the active day-to-day stuff is fine for most of them because all barcodes work, and so on, it's fairly straightforward. Give them an old paper record to scan by barcodes, and they struggle already because most of the documents will be missing the barcodes since it's pre-digitization stuff, so you have to know your stuff or how to find the right barcode for your document. Ask them to take someone's record and just scan it in batch under one giant PDFs and all hell breaks loose. New employees have never touched a paper record, so by trying to sort the existing paper record by decreasing date for ease of access, they separate stuff that they shouldn't and make a mess. Everything's too easy now. They don't take the time to understand what they're doing. They trust the barcodes to work and move on to the next document. They've scanned the same document hundreds of times for various patients and yet can't tell you that it's a cardiac stress test, and they can't make the connexion that it should be kept with the written cardiology consultation of the same date if you batch-scan a patient's record. At this point, I'm just like... and those are the idiots handling my medical records? Fucking awesome. /s
@@Hayden-rc1ru I've been a nurse since 2007 and when I first started only the really nice hospitals were digital. We used paper charts for ages and ages in nursing homes. Nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find any place that isn't digital around here. But of course systems go down all the time and in the medical field you can never stop documenting. There's a right way and a wrong way to document as I'm sure you know. I've been shocked to my core a few times by having to completely explain how to document properly on paper. Paper doesn't sign, date, time, and initial for you. 😂 You'd think they'd still be taught about this when they learn about nursing shorthand but it seems not.
It does also help to see both the pros and cons of different technologies. Just because it's digital, doesn't make it necessarily the best way to do something in every given scenario. Sometimes you actually do better with analog. In the very early noughties i went travelling for a year and the sum total of music i could take with me was 6 tapes. A fellow traveller had a cd wallet. She felt pretty well off with her hours and hours of music until a terrible accident befell her wallet (the same accident would probably have killed an ipod too, if such a thing had existed yet). All of her cds were either completely ruined or scratched to the point of being pretty useless. If the same had happened to my tapes they would probably have survived anyway but even if the housing hadn't, i could have bought some blanks and put the actual tapes on their reels and the music would have been fine. I actually snapped a tape at one point (overuse) and a swiss army knife and some sticky tape was all that was needed to fix it. Try that with Spotify if you have no internet connection. I also never needed to worry about charging or having a power cord connection. A couple of spare batteries and i was good, no matter the length of the road trip. A couple of years later i'd have had the option of an ipod (if i could afford one). Now people rely on streaming their music. Not me. I digitised my entire CD collection and have it all saved on my phone. I might have to worry about staying charged up but i could be a thousand miles from an internet connection and still have access to every piece of music i ever bought. It's good to know what's useful about technology and what isn't, depending on your needs and priorities at the time.
There was a sweetspot generation of people that had technology exposure early on in life, but also had to put up with the clunky UIs of early computing, and had to troubleshoot their computer, and manually organize their folders, and physically plug cables into things to get them to communicate, etc. Generations before may not have had as much exposure early on, but still benefitted from those things mentioned above. Newer generations were handed iphones that automagically do everyday tasks wirelessly and with simple UI inputs, and are now going into the workforce where companies are often still runnin a decades-old mainframe that comunicates with a janky GUI front-end programmed in Java by a summer intern, and take responsibility of a company laptop/desktop, and do all these things that are just foreign to them.
Yes, and that's my main criticism with that statistic : That sweet spot generation you're talking about ? *That's the Gen Z* ! That's the upper end of the 90s kids. The problem is that with the age of information, the Strauss-Howe theory that "people can be divided into generations of roughly 21 years whose upbringing and culture were shaped by the same large scale event" just isn't true anymore. It was struggling for millenials (Does someone born in 1981 share a lot with someone born in 1996 ? Can't say, wasn't born then), but it just completely falls apart for Gen Z. 1997 kids have a completely different upbringing and cultural identity from 2012 kids, even though they're still pegged as Gen Z by most sources. And even if you go "Oh that's not true, they're millenials/alpha !", you can say the same about 2000 and 2010 kids. One grew up with Windows XP and had those typing lessons in elementary school, has been working for 4 to 8 years and is thinking about buying their first home, the other was assigned iPhone or Android at birth and is currently starting high school. For one, covid meant "Dawg, I'm out of a job" ( ~and I have no savings~ ), and for the other, it meant "Cool, I'm out of school". Does that sound like two people with the same cultural identity ? Two people who'd have the same approach to technology ?
That's me, who had to grow up with a DOS PC, reinstall Windows 98 again and again because it slowed down over time, deal with the quirks of dial up, and watch the Internet grow up.
There is also the general enshittification of software to deal with. We grew up in a period in which both hardware and software were getting better and better and easier and easier to use with greater and greater user power and control. Gen Z are maturing in a world in which hardware and software are both getting progressively worse and worse in terms of consumer-focussed design.
I think the user control thing is a huge point, and I hope she has thought of that even though she didn't touch on it. Take PC games as an example. When I was growing up you bought games at a store on a CD, or from a magazine. There were no updates or support for lots of them. There was no DRM or security - you could reinstall as often as you like. And if something was broken, you had to find a fix for it or it stayed broken. Modding was practically a given, and people shared their mods on independent forums. As like, text. I would literally copy and paste mods or patches into a game. I'm sure there are exceptions but it's hard to imagine kids doing anything like that these days.
And a lot of hardware you can't even do what you want with it anymore. Apple products are shitty and locked down. Windows is just windows, but it really is MUCH easier to install and manage than it was in the past. And no one cares about Linux.
UX back then: "this is new but we've tried to lay out all the options in the most intuitive manner" UX now: "OK so these tabs take like 5 minutes to take you to the most basic options, and swapping between them forces the app to hang for a second, but the new project lead wants to look like he's doing something so expect worse updates later this month"
"Yeah, it makes it like a couple seconds slower, but we really need this feature" - Management (The system gets progressively more unusable. The 'needed' features don't get used frequently)
Yes!!! This is what I’ve been noticing as an older Gen Z in how digital literacy is presented now compared to when I was in grade school. It feels like we’ve lost a lot of the basics in teaching kids how to interact with online spaces. Even the number one rule of the internet “don’t share personal information online” is not common knowledge anymore. It was drilled into me during school at a young age that you never know who is viewing what you post and the information they can gather about you. Nowadays, we as a society have changed the way we interact with social media with influencers/vloggers bring so prevalent. Inevitably, kids (and irresponsible parents) will replicate that same behavior of sharing personal information online without regard for safety and what others may do with that information.
Also, every app and site and service demands almost or full access to all of your information. If you want to have access to the same tools and toys and keep up with everyone else online, you have to essentially expose yourself to these companies and then pray they won't use or lose the photos. If your forced/coerced to do that often enough, you stop being cautious always because you feel you were already compromised anyway at some point.
I work in a computer shop and I see this a lot. The vast majority of our customers that know very little about technology are usually the elderly and Gen Z (roughly < 25 years old). They don't have the technical "baseline" that the millennials and Gen x do, but the difference is that what they do know, they are crazy fast at doing. You see the opposite skill gap where when they do know what to do, the native tech skills are obvious, whereas the millennial and Gen X groups are sort of in this slower, more methodical "ok what's this thing up to" sort of mode almost permanently. Not scientific I know, but it's super consistent and I believe it's one of the most interesting parts of my job.
The generational definitions are a bit silly to adhere to, but I get you. As an older Gen Z, we’re much more like millennials. Born in the late 90’s, we had computer classes in school, the internet wasn’t as user friendly when we grew up as it is now, and even our first phones weren’t smart phones. So we’re actually quite a bit different than the Gen Z born a little after us, yet we get categorized with them.
@Ryan-cb1ei Yeah that's true, older zoomer here as well. I was already out of school when the pandemic hit, unlike half of the generation. I feel like that's a gap that's hard to bridge
@Ryan-cb1ei I'm also gen Z but while reading comments like OP's you just have to keep in mind that they're not talking about specifically you, they are talking about the general patterns that they've recognized. Basically, learn to deal with people generalizing. Will make your life less worrisome.
@@Ryan-cb1ei totally fair point. It's news to me that Gen Z started in the 90s. I have always mentally thought the generations were just 20 years (60-80, 80-00 etc). The more you know I guess. I do agree with you, and to be clear my original comment was roughly build around assuming the line was around pre- and post- millennium humans.
I work as a BA in healthcare. This is entirely accurate, but entirely expected. Remember all those articles growing up about how Millennials can't sew, or fix their car/house etc. Same thing different tool
I’m fairly early in Gen Z (2001, I still get mistakenly called a Millennial lol), and I grew up with lots of computer classes starting in grade school. It baffles me how quickly this stuff is vanishing. I think part of it is older gens expecting us to just be good at tech, but it’s not like we come out of the womb with this knowledge just because of the year we were born. Skills can be acquired from the environment, but things still need to be directly taught for the most part
Yes! They expect you to be good because you grow up with tech your whole lives, so they take away the classes. They forget that most millennials had computers in elementary school, but still needed those classes to learn them.
I don't know, copypasting is a basic skill you learn yourself- at least I did. Heck if people don't know how to look for files in file explorer or do basic modding with video game files, I don't know what to say. It's so simple. Open a file with the notepad you have automatically there and just look at what the numbers are and their associated statements. They're usually named logically enough you can understand what they do.
Yes, but see ? You're also part of the "never used a keyboard before" generation. The problem is that gen Z encompasses way too many people at once, and saying that about a third of them have trouble using technology is about as useful as saying about 51% of americans have some kind of lawn mower (riding or walkable). Yeah, sure, but which americans ? Are there specific identifiable groups where it's close to 0 or 100% ? If you live in New York and you ask your neighbors, is there gonna be a fifty fifty chance they can lend you a lawnmower ? Same thing goes for technology among Gen Z. About a third of them, sure, but if you ask your 27 year old Gen Z coworker, do you think he'll know what the CC field is in emails ? What about a high school freshman who's only ever used a phone and a Chromebook ? Regardless of the specific individuals, I suspect you'd get very different statistics, but here they're all lumped under the 32% figure.
As a millennial we had bad IT classes from clueless Gen X'ers, but we mostly taught ourselves because we had to. Computers were still too dumb and limited in resources so needed to maximise every MB of RAM, very little automated installs so you learned how to manually install drivers and configure them. We also grew up doing 99% of schoolwork on paper, so you learned to spell, no spellcheck for most.
@@Cecilia-ky3uwthis comment is a prime example of the "curse of knowledge" cognitive bias - once you know how to do something/about something, it becomes incredibly difficult to conceptualise how someone could not know that thing
Born in '02 and running a computer system from 1987 where I work. I can also operate VCR, camcorders, vinyl turntables, rotary telephones, dial-up connections, and more. I've personally prided myself on my ability to operate older technologies.
Your skillset is becoming increasingly rare in this day and age! Keep it up and don't let anyone call you "outdated". When younger folks encounter older tech and can't figure out how to work it, you'll be the one they call to save the day!
You're ahead of me; I tried to use a rotary phone when I was about 14 and even though I'd seen them in movies and stuff I was totally lost. My mom had to laugh when I agitatedly told her, "I'm trying to dial but the numbers keep going back!" Lol
I'm a 21 year old Gen Z. I grew up poor going to poor, underfunded schools in the middle of nowhere. We had typing lessons and were made to learn the basics of Microsoft Office. What's interesting is that, despite this, my peers who went to the same schools and went to the same classes still couldn't do the basics, because they simply didn't care. They had access to these materials, had the exact same instruction that I did, yet they didn't care enough to learn, even though they were essentially basic skills that everyone needed to have. But that's likely a small sunset of the tech illiterate group of Gen Z that you're describing. When I first entered university, I expected most, if not all, of my Gen Z peers to be about as tech literate as me. I'm a rising senior now, and I've slowly discovered what you just described. So many of my peers can't even do the basics that I was taught in elementary through high school. I work at the campus library in their computer labs, and many times I'll be asked for help, I'll get over there, and I'll help a person my age do something as simple as print a document by pressing the "print" button on the screen, or find our university's website through the web browser, or even just describe to them what a web browser is. We have a course as a required gen-ed that is meant to teach students all of this stuff, but in my experience, most people will either put that course off to the very end because they don't want to take it, subsequently robbing them from developing the skills that they literally need, or b) take the course but don't actually develop the skills that the course teaches. I feel like one of the final nails in the coffin for ensuring that Gen Z was technologically prepared for the work force (and in general) was COVID. Before COVID, all of the computer and tech based courses that I had in high school were so much different. We had different systems for learning to type, learned Microsoft Office, all that jazz. After COVID started, there was an immediate switch to Google Suite and easier to manage and use software that doesn't require thinking behind pressing the big colorful button. The courses didn't work to actually teach the students what they needed to function technologically, especially if they were going into a field where it was needed, or going to college where they'd have to relearn everything. It's sad and depressing to have seen first-hand.
Wow, that's quite eye-opening to read - when I started uni in 1997 I exactly the same sort of job in our 'computer clusters' helping out fellow students confused about how to save & attach files, I never dreamt it would be a role still needed nowadays! Good on you for learning those skills early doors!
Thank you for actually talking about this with out sounding like an ass. I'm studying IT and there was alot of stuff that I did not know that I was nervous to ask about because of the whole "young people use ipads all the time! Why can't he fix a server issue!?!" The lads of today are born in a world where the technology they us is already streamlined and optimised to a point that it looks like magic. We gotta be more understanding because I'm pretty sure that half of all the people in IT nowadays would not be here if all the tech they used worked like a modern day computer.
Cultivate shamelessness in the pursuit of knowledge. If it seems embarrassing to ask, but you don't know the answer, ask anyways. If you have follow up questions, and it feels more embarrassing because you already asked, ask those questions too, especially those. Question everything you learn, because even people who seem to you to know things have things they are wrong about or that they do but don't actually understand. Knowledge is worth it.
@MarSprite Part of my job is teaching students and full-time staff to use a variety of technical applications and software. We have a mix of Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z employees. It's great when people ask how to use technology. I want to help my team develop the troubleshooting skills I have by role modeling that behavior for them.
Unfortunately for Zoomers the tech they grew up with was very very easy to use amd required almost no trial and error to properly use. I can't blame the Zoomers at all for thisn they are a product of thier time.
Gen X and millennials grew up using devices that created programs as well as for consumption. Gen Z grew up with devices only meant for consumption. That’s a very different skill set.
That's simply not true, no disrespect. You can code on pretty much anything that has a processor. It's just a slightly different experience to use a PC instead of a laptop, or a laptop instead of a tablet. The issue, I suspect, is that gen x and older millenials like myself have actually got quite blurry memories about where, when and how we acquired the skills we use today, and we're looking at a bunch of fresh-faced high school graduates and assuming, quite incorrectly, that they should have all the skills that it took years of work experience for us to acquire. I've encountered this quite often in the workplace with interns and new hires, where the old hands say things like "what do you mean you don't know how to do xyz," without stopping to ask themselves how THEY came to know how to do xyz.
@@peterclarke7240 a laptop and a PC are basically the same thing. We had IT classes at school, big rooms filled with big computers and even bigger CRT monitors. We learned at school. Gen Z obviously aren't learning at school, otherwise they would know things like how to type on a keyboard or use Excel and Word by the time they graduate from high school. That's.. the.. point.. of.. the.. video.......
@@mydogeatspuke Yes, and MY point is that the video is misleading because it's based on a flawed premise. The study being referenced is quite a famous one, but it is based on Gen Z's own perception of their skills, not their ACTUAL skills. The video takes this, and rather than assuming that it's a CONFIDENCE issue, it assumes that it's a SKILLS issue, when there's actually no evidence to support this. And if you read the comments, the vast majority of from people who've latched on to this falsehood because it fits the overarching narrative of "next generation stoopid" which EVERY generation goes in for, but ESPECIALLY Gen X towards Gen Z, even though it was Gen X who taught, parented, and currently, in many cases, line-manage Gen z. I mean, who's to blame if Gen Z are graduating high school lacking confidence in keyboard skills? Who's to blame if Gen X lack the patience to train new hires in order to improve their confidence and skills level? And, of course, the OTHER way to look at it is this: The stuff that we do in the workplace, which we consider "essential skills" (which Gen X certainly wasn't taught in school), is already outdated. We're forcing Gen Z to last last gen tech, and then wondering why they're lacking confidence in it.
Xennial here. I remember at a sports retail store I worked for, I encountered a Gen Z worker struggling to send an email. Like he knew how to send it, he just struggled with actually putting his thoughts to email. I was so shocked I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. I explained to him it’s like sending a long text, but with everything you need to tell the other person all at once. He understood how to write an email after that. He told me that he was never taught how to write an email or a letter in grade school. I was really baffled by this, cuz I grew up learning how to write letters on old skool pen and paper, then how to do it on a computer, using Win 3.1 cuz I’m that old haha. Maybe they do things different in school now, and that’s a shame if they do. Valuable basic skills like this aren’t being taught like they should be.
it depends on the school. A lot of public schools are under-funded, have teachers that don't care, or terrible lesson guidelines. Not to mention, so many boards (or pushy parents) are focused on the appearance of success that they'll pass kids that really shouldn't, and the students end up graduating without learning anything.
I’m not saying you’re lying but I find it really hard to believe. I grew up in several different school systems and I’ve never encountered someone who didn’t know how to compose a letter or email in my generation(gen Z). I guess the most accurate way to say it would be that I feel as though that does not truly represent the broader portion of my generation. That’s doesn’t mean we should leave those people behind either just that the notion that we are less technologically literate is not as accurate as one might think.
@@Thomas-zt7dmI think genZ are very much a mixed bag, perhaps there's more variety than in other generations. I don't find it hard to believe that some younger gen z never had to write an email, so they weren't sure how they should write. So many pretty much only use their phone or the computers they do use almost work like a phone does (like chromebook or macbook), so they don't know some things. I'm an older gen z myself for the record, my mom has sometimes been surprised by how I can figure out things she can't but then lack some things she considers basics on the computer or other electronics.
I'll be honest, this doesn't really seem like a generational issue. This is just a humanity + skillsets issue. They said 32% of Gen Z don't know how to use their technology at work. It was the same 10 years ago with millenials, roughly 1 in 3 didn't know how to use the workplace technology. Prior to that, in the 80-90's a whopping 2/3 of boomers said they didn't know how to use the workplace technology. Seems like we've actually improved overall from generation to generation. In every era, there is a demographic of folks with skillsets that don't align with technical work. This isn't a problem, it's just a reality of statistical analysis of humanity and its skillsets. In 10 years, Gen Z will be complaining about the next incoming generation who "doesn't know how to use technology". 😅
@@rissa7059 I’m willing to wager for 24-27 year old millennials (late 90’s) that the number who don’t know how to use workplace tech would be much lower lol
AND, everyone seems to have some sort of resentment for these kids, and want them to fail for some reason. When I was in the trap of middle management, I couldn't tell you how many Gen Z clerks were telling my peers, and highers had no capacity for treating them like human beings, or training them
This is one of the biggest problems. Gen z already feels pressured to be good because they were "born with an iPad in their hands." So then when they need help like everyone else did when they were young, it's even harder to ask for help.
"Some sort?", "for some reason?" It's the same reason it's always been. Older generations resent younger ones because they see them as their replacements, so they want to hobble them as much as possible to stay releveant.
I want to know where these Gen Z work, lol. I'm a tail end millennial, and in school, we were taught how to use all of microsoft Office, type, etc. My issue is that so many jobs today want 5+ years experience and refuse any kind of training and want the least amount of required onboarding as possible. Then, once you've gotten into a workplace, even though you're more established than the younger generation, you're still underappreciated, underutilized, and not invested into. Companies want their cake and to eat it too. You can't have employee competence, without any kind of loyalty to your employees. It's created this toxic feedback loop that is causing this race to the bottom between employers and employees. Some level of mutual trust and respect needs to come back to the workplace. Otherwise, quality of life is only going to keep decreasing for the general population, and at some point, employers are going to be very shocked pikachu face when they've played themselves lol
There can, will be, and was never "mutual respect" by corporate entities and the "human resources" they exploit. If you try to respect it then that's just one more way for it to manipulate you into doing more for less. There could only ever be mutual respect if there was an equivalent amount of power, so that they are forced to respect human lives under threat of destruction.
Hard agree feom this late X/early millenial. The software sucks and they don't want to give any training. _Maybe_ there's a terrible video that helps some non-zero amount. And now Google also sucks so trying to find the answer yourself gets things like "add glue to pizza cheese". Add that they (like the rest of us) aren't paid enough to care much about any of it so they just don't. Kind of proud of them for taking our "whatever" attitude and turning it up to 11, while also caring a lot about things that are actually important.
We're already there, TBH. That's why "Quiet Quitting" is. People have accepted that they are in an adversarial relationship with corporations, but something like 90% of jobs in the US are under corporate control. It's a sort of passive-aggressive "Secession of the Plebians," where the ruling aristocracy has made the deal so absurdly one-sided that everyone just refuses to work anymore. It happened about half a dozen times in ancient Rome, and every time it was the aristocrats who caved. Turns out you get pretty hungry when you're sitting on a billion dollars in cash but your chef, the delivery guy, the grocers, the truckers, and all the farmers decided to take a break.
That's how it works. The fact that you got the job in the first place is the "approval" you kids are lookijg for. Now prove yourself before asking to be "appreciated". It takes time and effort to do so. Your colleagues are not your "friends", they are competition. Stop using emotions and feelings, you are there to work, not to play and socialize. Grow up.
@@schrodinger3467, employees cannot work if they have not been properly trained by the employer. Whenever I see “experienced required” in a job-listing, what I am really reading is: “We do not train people, and our company has lousy-management!” I have experienced this firsthand. Also, “Google” created the “Chromebook” in order to create “Chromebook”-users who would then only know how to use “Google”-software. This was, and is how they are competing with “Apple”, and “Microsoft” when it comes to workers who have to use software in their respective careers.
I remember so many people interpreting a baby's ability to use an iPad as a sign of the baby's intelligence, instead of as a sign of the iPad developers' intelligence.
The internet was a much better place before social media and high smartphone usage. Now it's heavily commercialized and everyone is trying to make a buck out of everything. Don't get me started on that there is probably like only 10 sites everyone basically uses.
It depends on who you're working for. I'm a millennial and worked with boomer professors for my PhD, and I was getting shit on for not knowing vacuum electronics (for example, CRT monitors) or analog video cameras, or for not owning a DSLR but using my phone camera instead. Meanwhile, if I tried to explain Python or Github to them, they would have an allergic reaction.
You may think so, but Boomers developed a lot of that tech you are talking about. ANyone who's programmed in languages of the past aren't having problems with Python.
@@RichardChappell1 They aren't programmers though but physicists. The learning curve would come from learning about all the different packages and tools, like numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pandas, jupyter, spyder. They still have Windows XP on their machines disconnected from the internet, because they fear running a software update would stop everything, particularly the legacy software from working. Having to manage version compatibility for a wide range of interdependent software would be unfathomable. It is possible to figure out by using search engines and stack exchange, but they prefer the old fashioned "give the company a phone call and ask to speak with an expert" approach - not even an e-mail, it has to be a phone call, even if the person on the other line insists that an e-mail would provide more clarity - no, don't let them hang up until they verbally give you the information you seek.
@@RichardChappell1 I've met several teachers with post doctorates in Computer Science - that surely programmed in "languages of the past" - that have trouble sending e-mails or using web browsers. Zoomers are clueless, Boomers are senile.
@@RichardChappell1 I think you vastly overestimate how many people in older generations were actually interacting with coding tools. I learned programming back in the late 2000's and early 2010's when tools like github and python were beginning to take off. For most adults (and my peers), computers were viewed as "magic boxes" that just worked. People generally didn't even know what code was, let alone how to read and write it. They barely even knew things like ctrl+c/ctrl+v existed. Or how to use the filesystem beyond the desktop/downloads/My Documents folders. There was also stigma: Being into tech like that was seen as something that awkward nerds do in their parent's basement instead of taking showers
CRTs - 😆 We recently had a safety concern where now one-including the safety experts-had a clue about how to gauge the safety risk. We had to reach a 90 year old supplier expert to tell us the particular (very small) CRT we we were buying was as much hazard as a static shock. (But, larger CRTs could stop you heart.) Almost no one makes CRTs anymore.
Flashback to 1992 when I had to learn DOS commands as a 2nd grader to run any computer game, 1996 when I had to learn the standard components of a PC to replace the graphics card to play Warcraft 2 (you think I could afford a whole new computer!?!?), and 1998 when I had to learn networking to play StarCraft over a LAN.
I wonder if some of it is patience/attention too. I spun up a Minecraft server because I didn't want to pay, but even my younger brother, I don't know if he'd sit through that setup. The setup I suppose wouldn't be the worst part, it's the research.
@@MrThosePeople I think it is because when you have that as the only option, then you don't have a reference of time to consider it a task worth of patience. It was just "natural" to us. Since this was the only way to play games, and we were kids that got fascinated with Doom and Warcraft, then we don't even questioned time, patience or if it was hard or not to do, we just asked how to do and did.
Me too, i grew with DOS and Windows 95. But spent most time on DOS, since most of my games were DOS games. I learned how to setup a LAN to play Quake 2 with a friend that had two computers (which was of his brother and he hated that we played on his computer).
Kids are very determined to play games and have fun and if there’s no other choice, they’ll figure out how to do the tedious tech task. Especially back when it was not possible to load up your computer in less than 10 seconds… i remember learning how to ping google as a 9 year old so I could figure out if my WiFi was actually down or if Neopets was just not working that day 😭 I still don’t understand the command line and I’m a data engineer 😅
I experience this in my family too. My parents think and say that I’m super tech savvy, presumably because I grew up with access to tech from a young age. Almost all of the time my “troubleshooting” is typing questions into a search engine until I find step by step instructions.
This is a skill, don't underestimate the value of skilled search engine use. Not many tech jobs can function without this skill. Being able to produce the answer you are looking for from a search engine is harder to the uninitiated than it seems to someone who does it regularly.
It’s a skill. A few days ago, my mom’s iPhone froze at work and she sent me an email from work asking how to fix it. I had to tell her to use the force restart procedure on the iPhone after searching it on Apple Support and in minutes. You press and release the volume up and press and release the volume down and then you hold the side button until the Apple logo appears and release. Then I got a text from my mom saying it worked.
I agree with the first response here - using a search engine is a skill. I can't tell you how many times someone has asked me something that they've tried to search for, and I found the answer in like 30 seconds to their amazement. The problem is... I can't really describe what I'm doing differently. I just have a lot of practice that's built an instinct for what search terms will work.
One thing I'll add is that there are a lot of abstractions built on top of technology as well. Like, you don’t have to know how your file systems work when you can just search through by typing some words and find things. It works against people because you can't organize things when you've never learned that you COULD organize them to begin with. And this is just one example.
I've seen this in even younger millennials who are technical because they grew up with cloud systems and WiFi that just worked. So issues, challenges, and considerations that involve the networking layers that still underlay all of that flummox them.
given how long it takes to get a search result from some of my folder trees when I forget where something is, one dreads to imagine someone putting up with that constantly.
Even if you know how file systems are implemented, that doesn't help you use them. Honestly, I think I'd prefer a tagged system, rather than the typical tree implementation. I'm certainly not going to build one from the ground up. That's a lot of work.
@@goodfortunetoyou Google Drive was originally built to be only by tags because when it came out doing everything by categories and search was the MO. The folder structure came later because people were used to organizing documents that way and hated Drive because it didn't do that. Drive's underlying architecture is still tags tho and the folders are a facade. So that's why a folder can have multiple files with the same name or be "stored" in multiple places at once. Understanding that underlying design makes a lot of its "quirks" make more sense because in a different design paradigm they are features.
@twothirdsanexplosive Quirky, yeah, but imagine you want to store client records by the year they were with you. Should the first directory level be client or year? In a tree implementation, you need to pick which comes first. With tags, you can either get all years for a given client or all clients in a given year. It's one of those mild annoyances which will never go away because of the historical/cultural inertia.
Keep in mind that typing classes in public high schools used to be reserved for the work force level graduate track, NOT the college prep/ professional track. As soon as I found out that all of my college papers and theses would have to be submitted "typed" I immediately sought out typing classes in high school. At that time, in the 80's, I was told that typing class seats were needed for people preparing to enter the work force out of high school, and were not available for Regents or "university track" students. Absolutely stupid and totally lacking in foresight. It was as if the education system itself was refusing to accommodate students that possessed the foresight that they themselves lacked. I remember a computer in a locked room with a window in the door in the guidance counselor's office. Message: you can look but don't touch!". Zero foresight, head in the sand, hello McFly?????
By the late 90s, typing classes were required at my middle school in Oregon. I took a typing class in 2002 and was taught Excel in 2003. So they eventually started fixing that oversight, but now they're back to screwing up by not offering those classes anymore. It sucks.
Typing classes were also seen as "women's" classes, as most women were still the majority of secretaries and PAs. Taking typing class as a man was seen as emasculating and worthy of ridicule, whilst the nerds would deem you "not nerdy enough" to teach yourself.
I was born in 1998, so im an elder gen Z. My brother was born in ‘89 so he’s a millennial. He’s always criticized me my whole life about how I don’t actually understand how technology works and have to get his help for anything tech related essentially, and he’s right. He grew up with computers and learning how they work, but I was just born into the world with easy access not understanding any of it. And it’s definitely only gotten worse for the younger gens
I wish your brother wouldn't criticize you. That sucks. My older sister and I were born in 1989 and 1991, and our sister born in 1994 has a wide gap of knowledge compared to us. I would give anything if she'd let me teach her, but I think the defeated feeling makes it feel not worth trying.
@@Aster_Risk I have younger cousins who can do incredible things with 3D animation that my millennial brain thinks should be impossible. Every generation has their own experiences and technology.
Learning a computer is like learning another language. Once you've started adoloscence, it becomes much more difficult to pick up a new language. But starting early, a child's spongey brain can learn a new language no problem. It's not a peculiar skill. Look at all the multi-cultural people who are bi and trilingual. The same thing can be accomplished with computer language.
@@hemendraravi4787 It's a career choice now, so that makes sense. Though I see that AI it making for a lot of layoffs. Someone who isn't creative with programming, who just learned it for a job, isn't going to last long. When I had to go back to C++ as an older guy, I saw just how bad the average programmer is. I know it was just a 101 class, but you can really see into someone's brain when you look at their code. Most people are too sophisticated. And that's their nature. Even if they improve, that nature is already hardened. Most of them were around 20 years old, just getting into it, like you suggested. And there was only one other true blue geek like me who understood the meaning of the code. I'm sure AI is already more proficient at the basics than most IT grads. Only real geeks are gonna survive the AI takeover. I hope parents somehow introduce kids to programming. Just to see if they have the knack for it. And for them to appreciate what is going on beneath the UI. My IT future didn't work out, unfortunately. I had a lot of real life problems. But if I want to try again at the age of 43, I'm still perfectly wired for it. Thanks to my mother up above who collected the TRS-80 and the books somehow. But she was working military computers before computing went to consumers. Hey, thank you very much. I've been really hard on the young folks. I didn't think about how I was a rare boy with a mother who was working with a mil-spec supercomputer. She wasn't a programmer, but it was plain for her to see that computing was the future. I was fortunate to have my mother. Sincerely, thanks! I won't be so hard on the youngin's anymore.
You know what's something gen z / alpha has a horrible time with? ABSTRACTION. These kids have never abstracted concepts for tech, like we had the "folders" and "archives" and "directories", but to them everything is on their phone and it's just there, they just share everything within like the apple share featurse or google like she said. Coding companies are going to put up some serious bootcamps for their junior devs these coming years.
Directory structure has some issues, but its currently the system everything (electronics) mostly runs on. You still need to know how it works. Its a currently a basic life skill.
Yes. They're hardly capable of abstraction in the language they physically speak. They can hardly compartmentalize their own thinking. So how can they understand a computer's compartments and structure?
I’m an older Gen Z (‘99) and was shocked to learn that my cousin in elementary school doesn’t have any computer classes. They don’t even have a computer lab at all anymore, they just use iPads in class.
I am a college professor, solidly Gen X, and I see it more and more in my classroom. In fact, I am teaching a whole generation that is technologically distressed because of reliance on mobile technologies at the expense of basic computing.
@@pcpeartIt's not that surprising. Gen X grew up with this tech, while it went from janky af to feature complete with simple UIs. For younger folks, the stuff simply worked, so there is no need to dig into anything beyond the limits of what you need to do a task. Simple UIs and lots of automation have replaced knowing where the nuts and bolts are, even if you can't "make" the nuts and bolts yourself.
@@PaulGuyit's not just that, it's always being fed the next piece of information by the algorithm - never learning to formulate the basic question of what you want or need to know next.
@@PaulGuy Gen X has the unique position of knowing how things were done in the analogue world while still being young enough to have gotten their minds around technology. The thing about understanding non-computerised systems is it instils an understanding of what's actually going on not just the answer. Pretty much everything in the analogue world was organised as a series of steps and sub-steps. Phones, banking, libraries, newspapers, street directories, everything worked that way. Big thing > divide in to broad categories > divide into sub-categories > within those put everything in a logical order. All very easy to understand when you're doing it manually and have to know each step but all very opaque today.
I think a large part of the issue is that companies are training staff less and less each passing quarter. Even if you are a computer science major that deosn't mean you will instantly know the ins and outs of some other software, you have to teach people how to use different tools.
This isn't really true, especially for early and mid career jobs, companies hire you expecting to train you because all of them have bespoke in house software you need to be taught to use. What they look for is if someone will he easy to train and if you were raised on easy to use tech, it puts your at a disadvantage when it comes to how quickly will this person learn. I'm not saying companies don't expect new employees to have more experience than is normal for entry level but they absolutely have to train you
Gen Z has rarely seen programs break open and for the insides to be clear, now when things break, its an obfuscated or completely undescriptive error that the user will never figure out, and never have the opportunity to fix and learn from. this is probably largely the fault of server based architecture. most apps the newer generations use are in browsers on other servers, they can't fix a computer they aren't running. Chromebooks and Macs to me are also a large part of the blame, most laptops that people interact with are Mobile-ified, its not so much a compact desktop, as it is a bigger smartphone. ChromeOS is starting to allow the kind of childlike discovery of getting the most out of something with the cracking open of the web facade to reveal the Linux OS underneath, but this is still limited. but ultimately, it is education, on both sides. Salesforce and other business software suites are slow to change UI and UX, they likely are just not intuitive to newer generations because of the divide in UX of modern mobile tech vs sometimes still XP era design. if it aint broke, don't fix it, but maybe its time to adjust. i'm Gen Z, but i grew up in a techy family with a linux laptop, i'm already not happy with the iconification of modern software, Gnome (a linux UI) is borderline infuriating with its icon only buttons on its bubbly spacious-yet-cramped feeling, which is heavily inspired by touch interfaces. optimising for touch is good, but i'm a bit old fashioned, i look for a search bar, not a search button. but someone else probably finds it easier. both parties need to come together.
Agreed. How is Gen Z supposed to troubleshoot when the error message is "Oops! Our code monkeys are working very hard to fix this"? There was a period where technology was designed to help the user, but not coddle them. Interfaces were focused on usability over intuitive design, and error messages were more helpful because people actually relied on them. But as tech became more reliable (a good thing to be sure) error messages became increasingly useless. As they became more "user friendly" they also started to coddle users and prevent them from tampering with how the system works. I'm going to disagree on the need for Salesforce et al to adapt, because the core problem with intuitive UI is how it prioritises day-one usability over long term usability. Intuitive UI design tends to trade away long term effectiveness in exchange for being able to be used without much training. This makes sense for a self-service touchscreen kiosk, it however doesn't make any sense for a role where the tool is going to be used by the same person day in and day out. Do they need better training programs? Sure, but I think ultimately you can't really sidestep the fact that powerful tools have learning curves.
"i'm a bit old fashioned, i look for a search bar, not a search button" Does anybody want to tell him that windows comes with a search bar right on the taskbar? That's one of the first things I hide on any fresh install, along with general taskbar debloating. Super minimal, super clean.
@@uss-dh7909 i was referring to the apps, it was a more specific example of the app store. the main app search bar is actually a nice search bar in the start menu, but that is a 3rd party extension that isn't the norm in GNOME. and works WAYY better than Windows, but that isn't hard XD
Knowing Excel, and especially advanced Excel skills, is a pathway to most of the most powerful business tools that technology can give. A person can easily have multiple pathways of employment with excel alone.
I think the pirate bay essentially worked off an excel file. Which was one of the reasons why it was hard to crack down on. Similar case with Wikipedia since all they need to host is text and the occasional image. I think I saw a video somewhere that Wikipedia has enough funding to sustain the site for like 100 years.
The most frustrating thing for me us not that they don't know the tech already, its their lack of willingness (ability?) to try to figure it out. I try to work with them explaining, showing and sending them written instructions afterwards which still doesn't work. They run back to me to solve the same issues time and time again.
That is frustrating. I'm interested if this may be because of the low literacy the younger generations are facing. And also as she said, lack of friction points where someone has to simply figure things out for themselves.
@@HydrogenTwoOaccording to a teacher friend of mine. They're not being taught how to read anymore, not really. Especially not with phonics. They're learning only to recognize words in context, or by the "vibe of the sentence", if I remember correctly. 😨
@@theyoftheravens THat's the problem with sight words. It's fast at getting children to read, but they are always limited in their comprehension andability to figure out words they don't know. And often misread words that have similar letter patterns.
At that point it may be more due to a problem of motivation. You could be conflating two distinct problems together. They are most likely disenfranchised with the job itself and corporation as a whole. What looks like incompetence is actually just indifference.
I expect a lot of it is just how old the tech we use in workplaces. Gen z grew up with the technology from the 00's, maybe legacy stuff from the 90's. My place has some systems from the 1970s. It uses green text on a black background because there weren't even RGB displays when it came out. Hadn't seen something like that since I was a kid, except in Fallout
Nah I think this is just a regression in capability due to cost saving measures. Computers were replaced with tablets in education for GenZ because it was cheaper and still "technology" so now a subset of them are bumbling idiots on a desktop because they haven't been trained to do anything there, and the level of understanding of how to get things done is a bit beyond going to the app store and downloading an application that has been hyper optimized for ease of use.
@@richardmikel6778Tbh as gen Z i didn't realise that there are people my age that are technologically illiterate, im not even a older gen z, i was born in 2008, and i never had any sort of computer class of any sorts, yet most of my friends know how to do basic computer things, sure not all of them know how to install a operating system or dissasemble a laptop, but we had to learn how to do atleast basic troubleshooting to get our lan networks working together so that we could play minecraft together, and later on getting lan emulators to work, im not sure if its just my experience but im surprised that there are people my age or slightly older that are so technologically illiterate they can't send a email, i once played a entire match of strategy games by sending save files over email simply because someone migrated overseas and we haven't figured out lan emulators yet
sound cool i want to work there lol i think i only saw a screen like that in a post office when i was a kid but they got rid of it and replaced it with a windows 98 system
Absolutely. I am early GenZ and work in coding. I absolutely notice this in myself. I can do my job, but it feels like i miss context for so many things and its just assumed that i have it. I do my best to learn what i can. But its like.. the gaps i have are in the foundations of old tech. when you look for explanations, you run into even older tech that its based on. getting to the roots of anything without skipping vital info feels impossible, because all of it is interconnected and assumes that you know the jargon of the time
I do not believe that at this software engineering or even developer level from a gen Z individual perspective, an average millennial or even from gen X would have any edge in this. It's all magic until any of these get into operating systems and/or electrical engineering.
Find a good mentor, if you can. I love explaining the history and technical foundations of things to people, but nobody is interested in hearing it. They just want to get the immediate task done ASAP.
I’m 17 and grew up using technology and computers a lot and was always open to tinkering on them. I’m sure my unsupervised overuse of technology had some negative effects but I’m much better at tech than a lot of people my age, which I’m grateful for. What frustrates me isn’t just people’s inability to troubleshoot because of a lack of experience, it’s that many people refuse to even try. If something doesn’t work, they’ll just give up or ask for help immediately.
Yes, that is exactly the issue. I've had older gen z constantly asking me the most basic of questions for their excel "issues", like if the content of a cell mistakenly gets deleted, but is the same as another cell, they're like "damn, I've broken it, how do I fix it?"...you copy paste that other cell, obviously. It's wild to see. They're not dumb, they just do not try to think or even look it up online.
This might explain quite a lot regarding how Discord servers have somehow become a hub of (terribly organized) tech documentation. If your go-to method of fixing something is asking another person for help, then it makes sense to go to a Discord and ask a question that has been answered hundreds of times already, instead of looking up the centralized documentation with a search engine. Discord provides someone who will reply, which better fits the preference of asking for help.
@@aaflesje access to education is completely disparate and racist/classist/sexist, absolutely, but all the ppl I deal with at work are privileged, some even privileged amongst the privileged, and the issues are the same. So in this particular instance, I don't think access to "good schools" make any difference. If anything, those I interact with from expensive private schools are so used to their hand being held throughout their school years, they're not exactly proactive.
I just pulled my eldest out of public school earlier this school year. As a first grader he was having computer lab time and learning to type, which was when I started having typing lessons too, so it surprises me some people in-between didn't. That being said, I totally agree that school no longer prepares kids for living in the real world. It also needlessly adds extra stress. My son was having daily panic attacks, getting behind in school, and having behavioral issues in first grade. Immediately after homeschooling he was happier and more at peace. Within a few months of homeschooling he caught up academicaly, got beyond his peers in several areas, and started working on subjects not offered for several more years. The school system is so broken that my mom, who was a teacher turned children's librarian, said she'd homeschool him herself (we actually joint homeschool him), and I have been floored how many teachers I've seen homeschoolling their own kids. And not just primary school teachers. A woman I went to college with and is now teaching at college herself started homeschooling her kids.
I had trouble at school. It turned out I was dyslexic and autistic. It would have been really helpful to find this out earlier. You might want to look into whether any of these kinds of issues are affecting your child.
If it were unschooling you'd see the same positive outcomes. School-at-home homeschooling takes credit for learning that would have happened _anyway,_ just like school itself does.
Realistically, it's a lot harder to teach an entire classroom full of children than it is to teach one child, just because you can adapt to their individual learning needs in a way that can't be done in a classroom full of other kids who also have individual needs. Tutoring is extremely effective, but there just isn't a tutor for every student out there. We can't just make more people teach children, so the classroom model is our answer, even though it's less effective on a per-student basis.
@adrianthoroughgood1191 I really struggle with this mindset that any kids who had trouble with the public school system must be neurodivergent/have a learning disability. It's just not fair because it's implying the schooling system is perfect and it's the child who has something wrong with them. Same with the behavioral issues to ADHD pipeline. Some kids just don't adapt as easier as other kids and the schooling system is really only designed to help the least problematic students. Everyone learns things differently and that doesn't always indicate a learning disability.
Yep. I don’t wanna shit on all schooling or everyone involved in every school, but schools suck so much now, particularly in regards to education. Forget pushing agendas and narratives, there are underlying problems at what subjects are taught, how they’re taught and what curriculums are used, what subjects aren’t being taught, and the type of and amount of work given. I’m 22, and I think I grew up largely with better opportunities than average (at least for me), and with my own difficulties in learning and in life, I’ve had school has largely been a negative for me (educationally speaking). I’ve learned better/more (pace/density wise, at least) from extra curriculars, games or other media, social interaction, and actual work than I have with school. Hell, if you know how, YT alone practically will and can teach you most subjects you need to know, AND the shit they won’t teach enough, like financing and personal home ec skills
I've seen this day coming where a generation being handed a polished technology fails to build "under the hood" problem-solving skills. I grew up constructing computers from circuit board designing to toying with operating systems. That experience yields a robust understanding; leaving the skills of Gen Z somewhat wanting.
