Do you think millennials who grew up with the early Internet and home computers will be as bad with future technology as boomers are with current technology?
Do you think millennials who grew up with the early Internet and home computers will be as bad with future technology as boomers are with current technology?
My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We're in our early 40s.
I am an older millennial born in 83 and I’ve been in IT for about 21 years now and grew up building and fixing PCs for everyone. I think the newer generation is going to be the ones that need the most help. Might be anecdotal but in my years in IT at first it was the older folks with all the problems taking on and using tech. Now it’s the younger kids coming in. In my opinion it’s the way we consume tech now. All tech in the 80’s - early 2000’s required a lot of tinkering and figuring out I always figured the older folks were just set in their ways and didn’t want to learn anything new. My first 15 years in IT I always heard people say “I’m not a computer person” as an excuse to not knowing how to change a signature in outlook, an app they’ve been using for a while, or some other basic business app everyone should know how to use.
Now consumer tech just works. Out of the box you don’t need to tinker or do shit to the stuff. Younger gen is coming us used to shit just working and when anything goes wrong they don’t do well with troubleshooting also companies make anything beyond basic troubleshooting nearly impossible without them so most just don’t try to figure shit out. This type of behavior is getting worse now people get tech that can do a few hundred things and they only use it for two of the few hundred and now you are stuck trying to explain how to do basic tech tasks to an end user who is just going to forget it an hour or so later.
I’ve noticed this with IT employees and the rest of the business. Maybe I’m just a salty IT guy but I do cyber security now and the tech skill levels are just bad and it causes me grief on a regular basis.
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.
I think most millennials and and gen-x folks will be totally fine.
I don't want to sound like one of those "kids these days" people, but kids these days have it rough.
I work in tech and old folks, mainly boomers, are usually ok to work with when it comes to tech, because they know they don't understand it. They grew up without it, avoided it when possible, embraced it when necessary, but they know that requires effort, and they're just generally not interested. I get that. They just need some reps and to feel comfortable, and they get it.
Most gen-z folks have grown up in a world where you just click things and they work. As a general rule, gen-x grew up in an era where you had to tinker with the hardware and software yourself if you wanted to do something. As a millennial, I had it easier. Most of the hardware was sorted, but some of the software was not, so you still had to do some configuration yourself if you wanted something to work.
Gen-z hasn't had that. If app A doesn't work, download app B. They're so used to things just working, they have no idea how to troubleshoot anything. In that way, they're usually worse than boomers. Generally a boomer will make an effort to try to fix something, understanding it's outside their wheelhouse. The zoomer won't and just stops in their tracks.
For example, a boomer will mangle the displayport connection on their computer trying to plug their HDMI cable into it. It looked like it would fit. The zoomer doesn't understand they need to plug in the computer to the monitor. The computer is already plugged in to the wall. Why plug it in again? Both things I have seen in the last 3 months. If someone thinks their computer is broken but it just needs the monitor turned on, they're more often under 25 than over 55.
Again, these are generalizations. There are individuals who don't fit into these trends. This is just my experience.
I love new tech and I’m gen X. I’ve learned new tech all my life. What will fuck me going forward is bad UI. At some point graphic designers decided a dark gray font was better than black. All the keyboard shortcuts I used were changed by Microsoft and I’m still butt hurt about it. Still use MS office but grumpy with the Ribbon.
It seems like my generation (Gen Z) is a lot worst with technology than millenials. Most of my generation don't know simple stuff like how filesystems and directories work or how extract a zipped folder. I blame the usage of phones as the primary computer and really dumbed down software that dosen't allow any sort of self troubleshooting or configuring.
I actually think the opposite. Millennials grew up during the boom of technology and many had to rapidly adjust to all of that in a short amount of time. That's why so many are so good at it. Gen Z on the other hand has trouble managing folders and files. This is largely due to tech getting easier... too easy almost. The direction of tech right now is AR/VR and my grandma was able to quickly grasp it because the controls are so natural.
I don't think that millennials will be behind in the tech field, but trends? Yes.
No. If anything technological illiteracy seems to be increasing again with the younger generations. They've grown up on locked down systems that don't encourage learning and exploration. It's not their fault. It's the tech companies and the schools who have made deals with the likes of Google.
That's why I'm a big advocate for Linux and open-source software, because it's computing with actual freedom. It's good for people to realize that computers are basically just abstractions layered upon abstractions, but at the core of it is the simplicity of a switch being on or off (assuming binary for now). It's not "magic" like some companies are fond of saying. It's not even particularly complex in itself. It's just a lot of simple parts working together. If you starts to understand those parts, then technology becomes demystified and you can often imagine how the underlying parts of any given system might work.
No I don't think so. I think millennials were in a sweet spot where more of us had access to cheaper computers so more of us had the opportunity to use them compared to Gen x and boomers. The strange thing is Gen z are becoming pretty incompetent with computers in general these days because of how much easier computers have become overall. If anything goes wrong they have no troubleshooting skills unlike millennials who had the misfortune of growing up with OS's like Windows ME. Source? I work in a high school and I see how bad the teenagers are all the time with general computer issues. They would much rather use their phone.
It's my hypothesis that this generation that is most tech savvy. This was a time when you had to know how to use a computer in order to ... use a computer. Today's generation has grown up with the app operating systems. They don't need to know the first thing about file manager or even ctrl-alt-del.
Speaking as a millennial I'm not bad at new technology but I really fucking hate how dumbed down and the planned obsolescence in everything nowadays. So that leads me to avoid using new shit a lot of the time. My phone for instance is 6 years old because there's nothing currently available that wouldn't be a downgrade in functionality. I'm also dreading getting a new car because all the newer ones I've been in have really shittily designed infotainment systems and a bunch of extra crap I don't need. I really feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I look at where technology seems to be going these days compared to how optimistic I was a decade ago.
I agree with people here saying that younger people are just not very computer literate anymore. I bought my daughter a starter desktop computer so she would get more computer literate, but it sits on a desk while she uses her iPad. The schools have Chromebooks, which is the push-here-dummy of operating systems, especially when the school restricts it. Apps on phones and tablets just work. There's no learning curve.
Unless they're specifically interested in computers, they don't need to be computer literate anymore.
That said, I think future technology will reflect this. They won't need to be for most jobs.
Technology for new generations is really dumbed down, unless you want to learn and get into the weeds deliberately. Millennials know how to work around multiple operating systems and generally also learned how to troubleshoot (of course, there are a lot of millennials who aren't interested in tech as well). Zoomers will definitely have their own generation specific stuff they will know much better than any other generation.
I like to think every generation has it own knowledge and speciality, and bringing those together is when we as a species grow and advance.
I'm a primary school teacher, not related to computers, but every year kids are getting measurably worse with coins and money. I can give quite a few 9 year olds a few coins, and they would have a seriously hard time quantifying the amount. It's funny the parents come to me saying their kid needs to be extended, but I'm just here saying "bro, your kid can't even buy himself an ice-cream."
Speaking as an elder Millennial, probably. As I get older, I get lazier and desire convenience over shiny and new. I recently got back into rebuilding my music collection and the high seas have changed since last I sailed. That being said, my desire for music drove me to learn the new ways, even though I didn't really want to. The bigest things that stop people from keeping up with technology is desire and ease of access. Most people could give a fuck less, so they don't bother with it, and the older we get, the less fucks we give. Those of us with a desire, for whatever reason, will choose to learn.
My family got its first PCs in the mid-80s.
My mother was a huge part of training people how to use PCs. She would drive a night computer lab (RV with 7 PCs) to business and train all the employees in his to use them as they began adopting the technology, and as the moved on she became a leader in information technology and project automation in the engineering world.
Her long, successful career was all very technical. She was an inspiring person who adopted new technology a decade ahead of time and never feared the future.
Now she can't operate the TV remote or her cell phone without cussing about all this damn confusing technology.
Yes. Because I already take tech support calls/chats from them while working at an ISP. There was a very limited sweet spot where SOME kids became computer literate. Then smartphones happened. It's all been dumbed down again. People call the Internet "WiFi" and have little to no understanding of how anything works.
"I'm working from home on my MacBook Air!"
Absolute madness. Trust me. They're mostly very dumb already.
I'm an "Oregon Trail" older millennial, whose first computer was a Tandy 286 running DOS (and Tandy Deskmate GUI shell). My parents bought me the thing but had no idea how to use it themselves, so six?-year-old me had to figure it out entirely on my own. I had to understand things like IRQ conflicts, "high memory", the difference between CGA, EGA and VGA, and (to some extent) how to use the DOS command line just in order to get my games to work.
Without that formative experience, I would not have become the Linux-using, self-hosting, software engineer I am today.
Frankly, I fear for the zoomers. I'm currently trying to figure out how to give my own kids at least a taste of a similar experience, because the last thing I want is for them to be slaves to whatever "easy"-but-exploitative technology the FAANGs of the world are constantly trying to shove down the throats of everybody who doesn't know better.
Counter argument: people have grown up with cars for over a century. Still, no one knows shit about cars where many have no clue about even filling it up by themselves let alone check things like radiator fluid, oil, etc.
People will be more accustomed to using tech, but that doesn’t mean the masses will know how it works.
Boomers are not bad with technology, at least not boomers working in tech... It's the younger guys with ipads that have no clue how anything works. :)
One teenager I met wanted to be a data scientist and had a running jupyter notebook but couldn't write a simple python loop on his own.
I asked him why, and he said he wasn't interested in learning that, he just wanted to do AI easily and get quick results. It was all about getting to the end result as quickly as possible and skipping the foundations.
This is the YouTube generation. Very impatient people. And you actually need patience to learn more difficult things...and you have to be OK with feeling stupid too.
I was just thinking about this. I'm really not sure. I think technological progress is not the core issue but rather a sudden paradigm shift in how you interact with what you use on a daily basis.
For instance, there was a generation that grew up without cars and never learned to drive even after they became commonplace. Just too big a jump from previous methods of transportation. But their children who grew up with cars didn't have any issues as the technology matured and new features were added.
So the question is will there be another significant paradigm shift in our lifetime that isn't just an evolution of current interfaces and tools, but rather a sudden change in how we interact with technology?
Who knows...
Absolutely. I work in IT. Some millennial are just as bad, if not worse than the boomers. If things aren't EXACTLY what they expect or they are used to their brains short circuit and they can't do anything. Like the button just moved to another menu dropdown Deborah, put in 20 seconds of effort and you would find it.
The porn tech pendulum:
Boomers: So your telling me that if I know the right people and go to the right theaters, I get to see porn? (Boomers become good at networking)
Gen X: So your telling me if I buy a TV I get to see porn? (Gen Xs don't get any cool knowledge, so they restrict porn on TV)
Millennials: So your telling me that if I get really good at computers and internet, I get to see porn? (Millennials get really good at using computer technology)
Zoomers: So your telling me if I own a phone, I get to see porn? (Zoomers don't get any cool knowledge, move to restrict porn on the internet)
Gen Alpha: So your telling me if I install these image AIs and VR programs, I get to see porn? (Gen Alpha gets really good and working with AI and VR 'interactions')
First: It's been the boomers who invented computers, the internet etc. Second: The average millennial knows little about tech. Give them an Android phone instead of an iPhone or a PC with MacOS or Linux and they'll start looking confused at you. And tell you the way it was before was better. Try to explain to people why something is or isn't necessary or about privacy and how our personal data gets handled and used. Most people are ignorant. Many people also have other hobbies than computers.
People in here talking about how future generations might be less tech savvy due to growing up with locked down devices and phones. I am worried things might go a different way. If tech companies manage to push open systems out, forcing us all onto locked down computing appliances, I could easily see myself being left behind as I try to cling to the glory days of being able to actually code my own solutions and configure an OS to my liking, etc.
My wife and I regularly joke that one day we'll harass our kids to help us with our neural interfaces but I don't think that sort of thing will happen any time soon.
When I was a kid in the 80's a lot of people could already afford computers. They weren't so cheap that everyone had them but they were affordable to a fair number of people if they really wanted one. A C64 cost $595 at launch, that's under $2,000 in today's dollars.
The biggest barrier to computers were that they weren't "user friendly". If you wanted to play a simple video game you needed to know some basic command line instructions. When I wanted to set up my first mouse for my 8086 it involved installing drivers and editing config.sys and autoexec.bat. You couldn't really do anything with a computer those days unless you were willing to nerd out.
At the same time, nerding out on a computer could easily get you deep into the guts of your computer in a functional way. I learned that the only way I could play video games at night was if I opened up the computer and disconnected the speaker wire so it wouldn't alert my parents. I also learned that I could "hack" Bards Tale by opening up the main file with debug and editing it so that the store would sell an infinite number of "Crystal Swords".
Today there are 2 cell phones for every human on earth. Kids walk around with supercomputers in their pockets. But they've become so "user friendly" that you barely even need to be literate to operate one. That's generally a good thing but it removes an incentive to figuring out how the stuff works. Most people only bother with that if they're having some trouble getting it working in the first place.
At the same time it's gotten much harder to make changes to your computer. The first Apple was a pile of circuits you needed to solder together. You can't even remove the battery on a modern one (without jumping through a lot of hoops). If you edit some of your games it's more likely to trigger some piracy or cheat protection than to let you actually change it.
There are still large communities of computer nerds but your average person today basically treats computers like magic boxes.
I'd expect that kind of gap in other areas. I'd take 3d printing as an example. You can get one now for a few hundred bucks. They're already used in industry but, at this point, they're still very fiddly. The people who have them at home are comfortable doing stuff like troubleshooting, flashing ROMs, wading through bad documentation and even printing custom upgrades for their printer.
Imo it's the opposite, millennials were in that period that you had to have certain computer knowledge to use technology. Today's kids don't use computers so much as they use phones and on the phones everything is super simplified for them compared to a 90s-2000s computer that we had to deal with. I think from here technology will only become easier to use to the point that new generations will actually have less technical knowledge compared to the previous generation.
I think we will be the exception because we came up when you had to figure out how to get things to work whereas everything today is intuitive and seamless and just works.
I'm able to troubleshoot newer tech when it doesn't work where it seems like gen Z can't do it because they haven't had the experience trying to figure out how it all works.
Maybe?
I mean theres boomers who were engineers in their youth who are complete idiots with modern technology, especially computers.
But as an elder millenial myself, I can kind of see it happening to me too. While I do enjoy technology and gadgets, I just dont have a need for all of it, nor the time to tinker like I did in my youth. Like I havent bothered at all with apple devices, so Im kinda clueless with how to navigate those things. Last time I used an apple product was around 2008 when I was using MacOS in college.
Yes. Now that tech has been refined and turned into fashion appliences, 20 somethings have no curiosity about tech and no desire to bend it to their will. Learning the underpinnings of tech bores them. I'm a boomer and feel like I grew up at the perfect time for a hacker/engineer. Tech was much simpler when I started out. It took work/programming to get your Commodore 64 to do anything interesting.
I don't think so. I honestly think we grew up in a time that encouraged learning how these things work. Anecdotally, younger people don't seem as interested, because everything's always "just worked" for them; they were raised on iPads. I already see them struggling with technology similarly to boomers when it isn't immediately obvious how to do something.
The biggest difference is the ui improvements. You don't need to know how to use a command line you can just click an icon. A lot of tech is largely the same as it ever was but just has an easier to use interface. Going forward something like palm readers and facial id scanners will simplify this even further as you won't even need to know what icon to tap. For better or worse.
I think it could go both ways. Another commenter mentioned the younger generation being used to things just working. You pull it out of the box, power on, good to go. When it comes to troubleshooting, that's where they seem to fall behind.
On a other note, I have a friend that is the same age as me, grew up with pretty similar upbringing. He's the type that if it doesn't work then it's not worth using. Couldn't get a Bluetooth speaker to connect to a computer so he got frustrated and played without sound.
I think it will really just depend on what that specific person was exposed to. Admittedly, there has been a few times I got confused at a card reader. I'm used to swiping or inserting the chip. Some card readers are the touch and go and it took me a few minutes to realize it was scan and go.
i think everyone can learn how to use new tech, its more a question if you still want to.
For example i dont feel the need to get into tiktok.....but if tiktok existed 15 years ago i would have.
Here are still old people using CLI text based browsers on a dialup connettion who never felt the need to upgrade to a more visual way to browse the web...even if they could learn it.
At a certain age u just stop giving fucks about new things maybe.
Your question reminded me of an interesting article I read a while back: Gen Z Is Apparently Baffled by Basic Technology.
It's kind of a click bait title, but I think it's still interesting. Technology is definitely generational, and I'm sure there are some things millennials will be better prepared to use in old age, but there will likely be lots of new tech that will be a struggle to learn.
Lots of interesting comments! I really enjoyed this thread. Two things I'd add:
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I think "technology" should really be referred to as "a technology". For instance, judging Gen Z against a technology (like a photocopier) that predates their birth seems a bit unfair. As a Gen X, I don't think it was fair to be judged for growing up with calculators instead of slide-rulers. I love old tech, but I'm not kidding myself, it's old tech not the only tech.
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Also shouldn't the organisation adapt instead? If new hires are more comfortable watching videos for training vs reading procedures, or taking photos of things with their phone instead of the photocopier, isn't that just fine. It's not my preference, but isn't it best for me to adapt rather than them.
It's not that I don't have generational pride. I like my generation, we were and are adaptable. I just can't imagine that the subsequent generations won't be as adaptable to things I can't even imagine yet.
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I think there are fewer tech-savvy people in the world than people think. Most people are capable of using tech just enough to do what they're trying to do, and don't take the time to learn to use newer technology, preferring to stick with what they know.
On the other hand, people with a desire to keep up with new technology probably will.
They are just as bad with current tech. Those of us who grew up as the internet was becoming more than just BBS and college databases had to learn the tech to use it.
Now everything "just works" so nobody needs to learn anything. Nothing is made to be repaired so if something breaks you just buy a new one. The younger generations can't even type properly on a keyboard even though they've been using them their entire lives.
With corporate monopolies, more advanced AI, and the failing of the education systems it will only get worse.
Most of the basic tech issues and dumb questions I deal with at work are for people over 50 or under 25. Younger GenX and Millennials generally pick things up quickly and have no problem with basic troubleshooting.
Maybe kids have a leg up on the boomers that only had slide rules growing up, but I believe that tech literacy is much lower than people realize. Beyond the bare minimum of using email and browsing the web, most people generally just don’t aren’t using computers in a deep way, including kids that just grow up consuming content on tablets. Touch screens actively obscure the complexity of computers to make them more intuitive.
This research was published nearly 10 years ago but I it’s relevant today: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
Maybe some of us will, but not all of us. I'm already better at troubleshooting things than my gen z coworkers because they never had to go through the things that we had to go through to make things work, or at least they don't know how to google things to find solutions to things like I do.
As a member of the Oregon Trail Generation (a sweet spot on the boundary of Gen X and Millennial), I think people who were in elementary school in the 80s have a pretty special set of skills where we can use "old" technology, and were frequently the ones who had to help our elders with it, and we have seen new technology (home computers, the Internet, smart phones) come into being and mature.
So we didn't just learn how to use tech, we learned how to grow with tech as it grew.
I'm guessing large language models - imitative so-called "AI" - is going to do that same sort of growth and change arc over the next couple decades. It's likely I'll be pretty mystified by it, but hopefully my kids will be playing with it and growing with it as it grows into a mature technology.
Technology is quickly becoming less and less about the underlying technologies and more about how the large corporations want you to use their product. I was briefly a volunteer website administrator for a small non-profit and despite having done freelance web development 15 years ago and knowing how to program HTML and several other web technologies, it was a struggle because they used Google on the backend and everything in Google was unintuitivly laid out and impossible to do without going through the Google interface. I often frustratingly joked that I was a Google administrator, not a web administrator.
Another example was some Linksys wireless mesh extenders I bought. The setup process involved using a privacy invasive app on your phone to connect with Bluetooth. It would try for 5 minutes and then just error with no error code. There is no manual setup process. There was no log file. When it didn't work after 5 minutes of trying, it told you to call a phone number that was always busy and blocked the 5 minute connection process since it needs a phone to do both things. Eventually, after about 6 hours, it just randomly started working.
Combine that with people biologicaly becoming less able and willing to learn as they get older and it's pretty likely that millennials will eventually get left behind even if they try to keep up to date.
I am late 30s. Grew up without cell phones, computers etc. Didnt hear about the internet before it was available at the nearby library.
However..
I study computer science. I love tech, gadgets etc.
My theory is though, at some point, my interest drops and i just stick with what i know. Just like i stopped caring about tv, popculture, fashion etc etc
You get other things to do, and less time for the fun stuff.
My daughter has this issue with others in her class - she grew up with me and the computers and games I got for her, and she was ahead of her classmates in IT from the start. Some others had never used a mouse before - at age 11.
In a sense, yes. People will build assumptions about the tech they use. An old PC didn't have a mouse, touch screen, GUI, 3D realistic graphics, most things that are now considered typical. AI is going to really, really push a lot of boundaries. Good and bad actors alike, as with all technological developments. People are creatures of habit, because change is uncomfortable to actually accept and learn.
Built my first PC at 8 years old, no degree, and my family is comfortable - which is really as far as my aspirations went career wise.
I think, because I feel it myself while studying for a specialization (getting bored in my current role), its that people grow apathetic to learning after a point, coupled with the pace of life... Who has the time, energy, and focus to keep up with every new facet of tech?
Its my passion, and still I have trouble.
Not a chance. Millennials had to be good at tech when they were coming up. Everybody after got iOS.
I'll add my two cents as a Gen Z that realized he was way more tech illiterate than initially thought.
In my undergrad, I was tasked with running molecular simulation jobs on an HPC that I could only access through a terminal. The complete paradigm shift I experienced going from just a Windows user to Linux was shocking. Didn't realize how little I knew about file system hierarchies, connecting devices, and seemingly unheard of concepts like mounting and partitioning drives. I didn't know that Bash existed, what a shell even was, or literally anything with networks. Imagine going from using Word and thinking the terminal is terrifying to writing python scripts in Vim without really knowing how to program either.
Linux plus a de-Googled phone is where I've been at. After nuking Windows 11 from my laptop, I even saw that it got a decent amount faster. Using software that won't have its UI drastically changed every year is nice.
The vast majority will be, yes. We may have grown up with technology being janky but it has been years since that has been the case. People are comfortable with the current tech. Even me as a techie will often reach for the thing that I know how to use rather than going through the process of learning something new. I largely just want shit to work.
I'm already one of these millennial who become a boomer.
I'm for the regulation of social media with age restrictions or restricting access to smartphone for the youngest.
When I see the damage of both of them on the young generation and at school, we can't close our eyes on the issues. We need to act and fix them.
It seems like most people at my highschool are familiar with their basic favorite apps and can get a not great grasp on new applications and programs. But other than that it seems like a lot of people seem hopeless because they might now how to use their favorite apps well, but the second anything errors out of bugs out or they install a new app that isn't so user friendly their brain just powers down. They don't even try to Google it.
This is one thing that kinda concerns me is they people stay in their little apple ecosystem and use the most basic apps they don't really get that experience of actually googling s error code or a specific bug. Even people who use their phones half the day still don't know shit about anything because they don't leave their bubble.
But I know it's not everyone's thing to try to step out of the bubble and learn how to troubleshoot and fix stuff. But there is so much cool stuff out there that they just refuse to learn because they didn't immediately understand the app. It's like they are scratching the ice with how much they can do with their devices and they don't even try to go deeper.
As a milenial, we were taught how to sewrch for solutions and trying to figure stuff out.
Chances are millenials will deal with tech far better thqn gen z. We might stumble when shit is so dumbed down its not even intuitive, but hey, we can actually search for solutions and use more than two brain cells.
They'll be worse, as qe abstract computer code more and more, less people actually have any idea how they work.
I don't think it'll be nearly as bad. Of course, younger generations will always be quicker than the last when it comes to new tech. I'm sure I'll be struggling with Timmy's fulldive VR system at some point
Nah, I've met kids who know more than I did back then.
I don't think so. I do think there will be a decline as we get older, but the overall level of aptitude will be higher than the generations before and after. It's the younger generations I'm worried about. Other commenters have already mentioned it, they've grown up with already well-polished UX to the point that they don't need to understand how a device works to use it. Most of us here have a high level understanding of how computers work, the app or browser you're reading this from, because we had to understand how they worked if we wanted to be able to use them when we were younger.
As a millennial who grew up with the early internet and a home computer, I think we'll be fine until we're not.
When the Chinese hackers find a way to patch our wiping robots with software that sodomizes you while humming Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ, I think we may struggle a bit.
As long as the core of new tech is still largely based on what we have now, I don’t think so. Might be a little slower to adapt, but millenials will be able to if they wanted to. If it’s an entirely new invented or discovered technology, then maybe we’ll become like boomers.
They already are.
I recall seeing studies posted back on Reddit basically stating that since modern tech is (usually) easy to use and highly polished, young people simply don't understand how the underlying tech really works. On the flip side, those of us who grew up having to set up comm ports and allocating extended RAM and set dip switches on computers kind of had to learn how all this worked or else none of our stuff would function. If you understand the basics then it is easier to deal with stuff when it goes wrong - it doesn't become an unsolvable box of mystery.
I have much more faith in getting a problem resolved nowadays by a younger Boomer or Gen X'er who tinkered with some of the early computer tech from the 80s & 90s, than a Zoomer or Millennial who has only ever used iPhones and modern Macs.
My experience is the more things “just work” the worse people are with the tech.
Those who grew up with computers in the 80s are typically the best at problem solving / hacking / debugging.
My kids literally don’t have a fucking clue, sadly. I thought they were going to grow up super geniuses with the amazing technology they inherited.
Honestly, I think yes, it’s inevitable. The reason why is that keeping up with constantly changing technologies requires constantly learning how to do everything over again, and again, and again. It will get tiring eventually, and people will feel that learning the ins and outs of yet another social media app just isn’t worth it when they can already get by.
I say this as as software developer who sees a new tool or framework or language come out every year that’s bigger and better than the last, and I see the writing on the wall for myself. I’ll be outdated and just some old geezer who works on legacy tech stacks in 10-20 years, just like the guys working in COBOL or whatever now.
Every new technology so far has been an enshittified version of what we had in the early 2000s, so no.
Lemmy is good, but is basically crowd sourced reddit. So not exactly an alien concept.
I don't think that will happen. Mom used to build websites, and dad is in charge of tech support for a power company. They are in their mid-late 60s. But they've worked with computers most of my life. We have had home computers since the mid 1980s. Neither of them have trouble with smartphones, tablets, or any other electronics.
The way some of my older millenial and x-er friends are reacting to AI I sort of wonder if that'll be the dividing line between generations. Someone in their 40-50s can probably afford to ignore AI in the coming years but a zoomer ignores it at their own peril. I bet there'll be millenials in a couple decades complaining about how it's crazy the youths have 'AI friends'.
Absolutely. They will try to plug keyboards and screens into the neuralink chip.
Honestly, I doubt it. We got in on this sort of stuff early in life, so I don't think we'll struggle.
100% sure, I don't even know how to use discord, that shit is confusing as hell while the fediverse is no biggie
And I am completly ignorant about tech I intentionally chose to ignore like tiktok and snapchat
I will. I’m eldest Gen Z (+ a software developer) and I’m already noticing that I’ve just stopped engaging with new tech. I know that one day 30 years down the line I’m going to probably struggle with new tech.
Tech in general is advancing at such an exponential rate that it’s going to surpass a whole lot of people quickly.
They already are. I have a teenager. She is technologically illiterate as are most of her friends. Oh, she has an iPhone, iPad, laptop, etc. But when it comes to doing anything more than using her favorite apps on it, it's like she's completely lost.
We lose some of our capacity to learn as we age but I think we also kind of get to a place where our plate is pretty much full and you just let a lot of things go that aren't important to you. I feel that way about certain things sometimes. Hell, I work with technology for a living but there's so much that changes so fast. There's a lot of stuff that sounds interesting but I'm not going to spend a bunch of time learning about it because I don't have time and don't care. Unless it has an impact on me getting paid of course.
Its dependant on how much of a jump in tech we can go. To me, the next jump is immersive AR, and/or realistic AR. That could be a hurdle for people not grown up with it.
Will they? They already are. The number of people I see who don't know what a file manager is is insane. It's insane because I remember before smartphones, everyone knew what a file manager was. They forgot? I don't know. It makes no sense to me.
I think in general, people are bad with technology.
The most common complaint I hear on most websites is "I have been here on this website since the first days, and now they redesigned the site and I can't find the place to change my profile picture", so you can already see signs of this.
The reverse also applies too. I notice other Gen Z members often asking things like "how do I make a forum" when they clearly just made a forum thread (they're called threads, not forums) to ask the question. It's like the internet equivalent of "how do I get Green Mario", "why can't Metroid crawl", "why does Zelda always have to save the princess", and "what gives X-man his long nails".
Nah, this is iphone issues. They do everything as inconvenient as possible. AFAIK there still no way to transfer files over bluetooth for iphone.
As a millennial that was born near the end of the cut off I think millennials will adapt well and likely better than most any other group except maybe Gen x.
We were brought up in the infancy of personal computer technology where everything was more difficult and convoluted than it is for preceding generations. We started out at minimum using DOS and having to circumvent the older operating systems where even the simple task of chatting with your friends online was a multi step process. Since that point things have really only gotten simpler.
If we were to create a meta person who has the general computer competence of their generation and tested them I think we would find that Gen x and millennials are not only as well adjusted to modern technology but also faster to adapt to it. They will likely be faster at solving issues and problems as the skills and knowledge they had to adopt early in life to do even simple things still applies to the basis of all computing that we have today. Even very simple things like file navigation, adjusting basic computer settings, setting up a computer, modifying files, and even using web searches to troubleshoot problems are strengths that millennials and Gen x will have that will likely see a fall off from there after in the other generations.
Computer incompetence has become increasingly more common over time to the point we are reaching now in the United States where it's fallen off so much is becoming a crisis as kids growing up now can simply only use phones and tablets and actual basic computer skills have become an issue. With the cheap cost of electronics there is even less interest in kids to learn how to solve issues on their devices as they see it as easier to just buy a new device altogether and avoid troubleshooting altogether.
I already am.
Damn near guaranteed.
Technology doesn't stop but at a point you get stuck in your ways. Sure you could use Windows Settings App, but you know how to navigate the control panel and the settings app is so damn cluttered. I could potentially live to be 90 something but I'm for sure intimidated by what tech would look like in 50 years.
Probably not as bad, but it is an inevitability I think. Once you get a certain age, major shifts are just more difficult to adjust to. On a smaller scale for example, I don't understand things like Tiktok, Snapchat, etc. I'm a millennial that will be hitting 37 this month, so my adjustment to social media ended with Instagram basically.
It depends what we mean by "bad with technology."
A lot of posts here are talking about how the current young generations (Generation Z and Generation Alpha) are bad with technology as they don't understand anything, and this is true, but to most people being "good with technology" means you're good at using it for desired results, not necessarily understanding how things work or how to troubleshoot.
In my opinion: No. Due to the type of technology that the millennials grew up with, they are generally good at adapting to new and changing technologies, so I suspect they'll be quite good at keeping up. Whether this will hold true for Z and Alpha is to be seen.
Nah don't think so. I think it's less of a generational thing and more like when a particular technology came about. Like boomers are in my experience generally okay with older more 'analog' tech. Millennials I think are decent all around. Gen z don't know how to use anything outside an app and it's baffles me.
Guess we'll just wait and see.
iPhone to scan a QR code.
Knowing that this feat was not existent 5years ago ( < iOS11) and is not implemented the same on , is it a fail ?
Yes.
Of course, there will be a range in all generations from those who ignore technology altogether and who will inevitably be bad at it, to those who keep on top of every change and continue to be skilled users of that technology.
I don't see why there would be a difference from one generation to the next. The proportions might be different: boomers and GenX who saw this stuff come in later in life and who know there is more to life than technology might be more inclined to spend their time away from that tech than later generations that grew up with this stuff. Or maybe the later generations will want to get away from it and rediscover nature.
I suspect that if and when retirement happens I'll (GenX) be spending a lot of time away from computers.
There’s plenty of millennials that are completely ignorant about the technology they use, so yes, they definitely will be as bad.
Careful about generalizations. I've been using computer technology since 1975.... #COBOL 👨🦳
This is something I worry about as well (mid-thirties millennial), but I'm really hoping it won't be a problem. Anecdotally, I don't notice any appreciable difference between myself and my dad (technically a boomer) when it comes to technology, but my mom isn't as comfortable. I think it's because my dad spends more time using various types of current tech and is willing to troubleshoot on his own, so maybe it's just a matter of continued exposure and a willingness to learn.
At the same time I see my grandparents really struggle with digital interfaces because they didn't grow up with them and don't find them intuitive, in a way that can't be explained by lack of curiosity. It's almost like they're not fluent in the language because they missed a critical period of learning in childhood? If a brand new, extremely different way to interface with the world takes over, I guess I could see myself and my peers struggling as well.
Some new tech thing will come along for us to not understand.
I already am.
I’m rounding mid 40’s. I use linux all the time and I am becoming increasingly bad at troubleshooting or fixing windows issues. I don’t really have that problem with my current OS and I’ve never used Win 11 once.
Gen Z is already worse with the tech that they grew up with because it is so simple and "just works" without them having to learn even simple things like file structures or how to type. So, I guess, no, you're looking at the wrong generation. Millennials grew up having to learn new tech as it developed, so adaptation is a skill among our generation.
Yes. I think the big jump will be with biotech. Some people will have trouble with organic interfaces and organic machines.
Meanwhile I love watching kids who have used touchscreens their whole lives trying to navigate a mouse.
Permanently Deleted
Yes, at some point there will likely be a change you don’t follow. Then you’re stuck
My grandfather was an electrical engineer. Very comfortable with technology. Built TVs and ham radios for fun, fixed people’s appliances on the side. He helped build the first TV station in Baltimore. After he retired, he built one of the first TV stations in San Salvador. His thing was power electronics and I could never keep up with all the facts, the formulas and math, the circuit architecture that just poured out of him at will. A very impressive guy.
Then as a summer project, he helped my brother build an amplifier so we had great music …… and realized his thing was transistors. So much technical skill, knowledge, interest, that didn’t make the jump from vacuum tubes to transistors.
We’re all thinking computers, since that’s what we do, but technology is so much more. Think of car guys. Huge, impressive, emotional technology that changed the world. But a lot of them got left behind with ignition electronics, more efficient engine design, exotic alloys. Think how many will be left behind as we transition to EVs. We’re no different
To all you guys bragging about which Linux you use, let me tell you about my lord and savior: cloud computing. Will that be the jump you can’t make?
Probably not but social media trends have got me fucked.
Some probably will be, but others might be geniuses.
It's actually the same today there are older people who are tech geniuses (ever heard of the GNU foundation) and there are also others who might not even know how to use a pay terminal.
It all has to do with their exposure to the technology, what they use it for, and how much they use it. The thing is though just because of technology is around while somebody is growing up in that generation doesn't mean that they have experience with it, a person could have grown up during the technological boom of the late 90s and not know anything about computers because they never had one.
So some people who grew up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are going to be very good with computers because they will have had a lot of experience with them and the problem solving needed to operate systems back then. Though other people who may have grown up in the same time probably don't have those skills because they never had experience with computers due to the circumstances they grew up.
So it's not necessarily a yes or no question it's really based on whether or not they have experience and interest to learn. Though also it will depend on how many of them are willing to change with the times. Though with the direction that technology is going towards more mobile simplified interfaces it might not necessarily be not understanding it might be more not wanting to adopt that style. Which I can totally get behind in my opinion.
I think the opposite actually. We had to live through rapid changes in the way we used and interacted with technology in our early years. I think we may be slower to adopt certain things than the younger generations because of "fuck change", but on a whole I think we will be more technically competent with newer technologies as they emerge.
No. Was born in the 90s and I'm doing fine
I fear I am already getting there.
Yes, of course, lol. It will just be a tech that hasn't been invented yet.
Yes.
Yes. Absolutely 100% yes. I meet people my age who have comparable tech skills to my grandpa. This is not related to age, its related to how much work you put into your devices.
Yes I think so, I'm already seeing young people helping their millenial parents with their phones.
No
I think yes.
I am a millennial that grew up with the internet and built my own PC when I was young. And I'm certain that I will be outdated by technology. There definitely are certain things that I just don't give a shit about and as I get older those things are going to compound. As someone that pays attention and tends to keep up with things that I feel are worth keeping up with while simultaneously feeling left behind on some aspects. My peers of whom do not attend to keep up at all are bound to a weird future that they know little to nothing about. As I certainly will, to a degree.
What about ancient technology? Give them a rotary phone, a tape player, a pickup, basically a good old stereo tower, worst, gave them a VCR and ask them to program it to record a show!
Also some Z and mostly A don't type well on regular keyboards, sometimes struggle with mouse or windows environment. They only know cellphones.
About the same. Everyone has a point where they decide to stop learning for some it is just way further out there.
I know people in their 30s who can't manage and I know people in their 60s that do fine.
No
