"Kids Can't Use Computers" is now ten years old, and it's only gotten worse
"Kids Can't Use Computers" is now ten years old, and it's only gotten worse
I was right in the edge of Gen Z and Millennial and grew up being the family’s tech kid. It still astounds me now that my younger sisters don’t know how to even look for solutions. They just get me. Having moved out I get texts and calls sometimes. I’ve had to explain that using a computer is a skill that is learnable. I didn’t learn by going to someone else. I had to learn how to learn. That’s the skill we should be teaching kids. Not how to solve the problems, but how to FIND the solution to problems.
Man, I didn't realize that article was written in 2013, it could've been written today, and it still would've been true. I think one of the biggest contributions to the tech illiteracy of people is, 1. Schools don't really teach you about that kind of stuff (in my experience, or unless you take a special course) and 2. Everything is basically done for you now, its incredibly easy to do anything basic on computers.
I'm pushing 50 and when people ask me how I know so much about computers, my first comment is that I had to program my first computer for it to do anything.
My second is that I actively sought to learn, and you can too.
Later in life Linux played a huge role in understanding how these contraptions work. Ironically, I'm a human factors engineer, so I'm also guilty of creating part of the problem. User interfaces that "just work"... Until they don't.
https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/
Students don't know what files and folders are, professors say A whole generation has grown up with powerful search functions, and don't think about computers the same way.
Apparently this has become a widespread problem in colleges starting in the last decade.
They even know how to use Word and PowerPoint and Excel
Oh how poorly has this sentence aged in the last 10 years. There's another nice article about this phenomenom of kids not understanding folder structure here.
Back in uni I was the smart guy whom everyone would ask for help, both with tech and non-tech issues:
"Hey nudny ekscentryk, my phone won't connect to the campus WiFi". Oh yeah that happens I said, you probably didn't fill in the login credentials correctly. This was actually rather tricky, because it used your.student.ID@separate.uni.subdomain.edu for logging in and required changing the default password at least once since registering, for database reasons I guess. They tried it, didn't work. Are you sure you know your password? No, they don't. Let's check in their password manager. They have an iPhone, which I haven't used since I indefinitely switched to Android a couple years back. Took me 20 seconds to find the password manager in Settings though. The password is not there. "Oh you mean my university password? It's in my notes". We go to Notes app. There's nothing here, do you use Evernote or something else entirely for that?. They use a fucking Google Docs document for notes. It's not very handy is it? Like you have to zoom in to edit, it's all clumsy because it's a document and the text's formatted weirdly. Not a problem to them, because "well at least it syncs so I can access it from my iPad." Okay, whatever. It's not like your built-in iOS password manager doesn't sync. We managed to connect to the WiFi network. "could you also do that for the WiFi in the other building?". But it's the same network, it will connect automatically to either. They know better: "nah it can't be, the range is too far". I explain it's not the same hotspot but the credentials are shared and in fact since it's eduroam, a global network, it will work in pretty much any university campus in the world automatically. "wow that is crazy, will that also work for my iPad". Well if you log in with the same credentials. "could you do it for me? i'll fetch my iPad". No, I've shown you how to do it, you can do it yourself now. They can't use a computer.
A different time I was proofreading a classmate's thesis, see quadruple x's next to each heading. hey, what's up with these? I ask her, she replies: "oh I put them here so I can easily find each heading when formatting text. If I make any changes I can just search for <xxxx>" and it will automatically let me go through all headings easily without scrolling manually :)". I open the Navigator (I use LO Writer) and it's empty. She wrote an 80-page document without ever using Styles. All headings, title page etc. were formatted manually. I enable the Formatting Marks. Holy shit. She uses spaces and tabs to move text around. Loads of line breaks to move text to the next page. I could tell the document looks off but I never though this was due to so poor editing skills. Or rather lack thereof. You know you're doing everything the hard way here?. "What do you mean?". There are tools for all that you've done here. Like you can use Styles to mark headings and then edit them in bulk. You can add automatic numbering, which will later let you create an index within a second. To move next to the next page you can use page breaks. "Okay cool but this is how I do it". Alright, then you are just giving yourself extra work, what's the point of not doing this correctly once and then never bothering with formatting ever again?. "Could you do it for me?". I can show you all these tools but I won't be doing that for you, as I'm already proofreading your paper factually. "Okay whatever". Guess what, she never bothered and when handing it the finished paper (probably around 120 pages), her instructor made her do it anyway. She asked me to help her with that. I said no, because I offered help before and she didn't bother. After submitting the paper, the reviewer returned it and made her re-do all citations in an, at least, consecutive style. "Oh fuck that guy why would he give me so much work!? You know how many hours it took me to insert all these in here.". It was around 280 citations total, out of 30 different pieces of writing. She obviously did all of them manually by typing out footnotes. You know there are bibliography managers which do it automatically in a consecutive style for you?. "Will it automatically fix what he asks?". Well, no, because (again) you originally did it incorrectly. This one issue was even stranger for me than her not using styles for formatting: one year later we both attended a "methodology of scientific publishing" class, where they introduced us to Google Scholar, Zotero, Impact Factor and other stuff she could use now. We even had a take-home project to create a bibliography in Zotero and she did it (with online help). But she didn't bother to retain it in her skillset, so when needing to actually apply that skill, she wasn't even aware this was exactly what she learned a year earlier. Crazy; she can't use a computer.
There seems to be a lack of good basic computer science education unfortunately. Schools and so on never caught up with the speed of technological advance. And back when I was in school, teachers taught things like "How do I use formulas in MS Excel" in computer science. It's probably still that way, so it's not neutral at all, instead you're learning how to use specific software products (often, Microsoft's). So relying on school education alone may be hopeless. But you can always learn for yourself or from others.
I'm seeing this with my oldest niece and nephew. They're okay with navigating their android tablets; but if you ask either them of troubleshoot a problem on the PC, they both just end up coming to me. Neither of them know how to research solutions either. Ugh.
Can be generalized to "nobody understands science and technology anymore". I can understand those who went offline and are not looking back.
🤓🤓
The Ubuntu Touch reference was a real throwback...
I don't care if most people are clueless around computers, it makes me feel smart.
I was a "Nintendo Switch Engineer" for figuring out over the phone that the AC adapter wasn't plugged in, which is why the TV wasn't displaying from the dock to the screen.
This is some "I am very smart and sexy" cringe.
I remember this article. It's the reason why I now have a laptop prepared and ready to give my son for his fifth birthday.
Lol