It doesn't matter if it's smartphone or desktop it's the not quite working part is what got millennials tinkering and understanding technology

Fuck desktop OS computers. You can be completely tech illiterate if you use MacOS and Windows only. Hell, even a lot of modern Linux distros are basically "Linux with training wheels." You want to get really tech literate? Do what I did and use nothing but vanilla Arch for around 3 years, constantly installing new things that broke my install and having to fix it or just reinstall at least once every two months. The greatest teacher isn't necessity. It's frustration. The second greatest is the arch linux wiki.

What I've heard, and what makes sense, is that Millenials had to learn technology and troubleshoot all the issues for their parents.

Now that they're grown up, they continue to troubleshoot issues for their kids and fix any issues.

So their kids don't get that same experience.

This is more of a generalization of course, there are absolutely genZ-ers who are tech savvy.

I think you raised a good point. A household where one or both parents is heavy into coding or missing would probably help them more than a household that only relies on 'smart' technology. Either of those options would be way more helpful for these skills than growing up without any technology, which is just reality for a lot of people.

I know someone from Gen Z who is horrible with computers. I also know someone from Gen Z who is fantastic with computers.

To be honest, I don't think any generation is immune to this, despite what some want to think.

My personal experience might be biased, but I've also seen a lot of millenials in their early to mid 30s who struggle with almost anything online. Too damn many. I've also seen some people from Gen X who are beyond tech illiterate. We don't really talk about those guys though.

There is still time to fix this problem with the younger Gen Z, but there's almost never any discussion about actually doing that either. "Gen Z" also includes kids who are around 12, but we often act like Gen Z all grew up into adults. Let's get some of that school funding back ffs! Kids have to learn from somewhere, and many of their parents seem to not care about teaching them any of this stuff.

Many of us were lucky enough to grow up when most of this technology was still developing. We HAD to troubleshoot things if we wanted them to work. Fewer things were locked behind "customer service" and crappy warranties. You could physically open things up to fix them without having such a high risk of breaking them in the process.

The difference now is that in the olden days when something broke you could fix it if you had enough technical know how. For some reason that doubtless involves money that I do not care to learn, companies have invested a staggering amount of R&D into making fixing anything as close to impossible as they can make it unless you are an authorized service technician.

Pop the hood on a modern car, you can change the wiper fluid and that's about it. Apple is proud of their walled garden and parts pairing and is considering charging for the privilege of sideloading apps. Most applications nowadays don't even show crash report data to the user and error messages are getting less and less descriptive for fear of being confusing. The only thing you can really pop the hood on nowadays is webpages, and even then you'll often have to do at least an hour's worth of reverse engineering to get anywhere useful.