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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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No, I think we'll be fine. It's Gen Z and Gen Alpha that are acting like boomers in regards to technology. My eldest niece and eldest nephew are tech-illiterate even though they grew up with PCs, tablets, and smartphones in their daily lives.
My eldest nephew can't figure out how to use Libby, or how to install unlock origin on his mobile Firefox browser, and my eldest niece has no idea how to troubleshoot or look up solutions to any tech problems at all.
It's frustrating and I had ban them from asking me anything tech related because I got tired of being the free, family tech support. Now I tell them "well, what did the sources say after you researched the solution?" And that always shuts them both up because I know they didn't even try looking up the solution on their own.
They also have the bad habit of believing everything they read online. I tried telling them both that they should look at more than one source when researching important information (nephew was doing a paper on the American Civil War) and they stared at me like I was nuts.
They are the living, breathing examples of Intelligence VS Wisdom.
I think us Millennials will, for the most part, have an easy time keeping up with new tech, even as we get older.
Man that is my biggest pet peeve is someone coming to me asking for help saying IT DOESN'T WORK without either trying to figure it out or even doing the tiniest bit or research. It usually takes one single Google search. My mother in law thinks she has the nuclear codes and she's gonna blow everything up if she touches her laptop wrong
I don't really like bashing or putting the new generations in negative light... But in this case it is true. Late gen x, Millennials, and early gen z grew up with computers and tech that was more troublesome and where forced to learn how to naturally troubleshoot. On top of that we got eased into the more advanced and user friendly stuff.
Later generations where born with the easier user friendly stuff and don't have to troubleshoot nearly as much.
Of course this is also a generalization and does not reflect on an individual bases
Every piece of tech today is made so that it works out of the box with usually a tutorial on an app showing you what to do. So, yeah, young people have a hard time with tech because 95% of the time, it works out of the box.
It's easy to blame them, but they never really had to debug anything. The tech has been dumbed down all the way so that anyone that is remotely functional can use it.
Yea, I don't like bashing my niblings generation either, but it's not just the two of them I've had to provide tech support to; my cousins kids as well. They all act like troubleshooting is an alien concept and panic when the WiFi stops working on their tablets.
Fortunately my nephew's high school has a computer class he's required to take. I hope he learns something useful.
I'm thinking new interfaces/concepts of interaction might be where we lose touch.
Just like the previous baby boom generation had people with a lot of technical knowledge about for example how punch cards were used to configure computers and how to type with an old typewriter, we might know much about more advanced technical software and touch interfaces, but many might skip the Snapchat/TikTok scene and feel out of place.
Not to mention future upcoming things like a Brain-Computer Interface connected to an AI; perhaps to socialize, to create tools / content. Some of us, and maybe you as well, will join this scene too, but I already see people giving up and staying away from new stuff.
We will have a role in the technical side because of our knowledge, but that core knowledge is not that important any longer in many fields just like most developers don't have to worry about machine code any more.
Programming with punch cards was a niche skill very few had.
People who grew up in the 80s and 90s didn't just grow up with tech, we grew up with rapidly evolving tech that ranged from clunky and buggy to completely intuitive. We definitely have a better chance of keeping up as we age.
Social media like Snapchat/TikTok is less about knowing how to use tech and more "who gives a damn?" I care about that about as much as learning about Pokemon. Just toys for kids that I will never need or want to know about. THAT sort of generational divide is inevitable.
It's probably right that exposure to earlier tech taught us different troubleshooting norms. But...To be fair, how old are your niece and nephew? Could be a maturity thing they'll grow out of.
They're both older teens. The younger ones are nearly teens, so I didn't include them in my mini rant.