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.
I feel this is very similar to working on a car. Back in the day they fixed those things up until they crumbled to dust. Pretty much EVERYONE’S dad knew how to do at least a little something on the car. But I didn’t. The car was just a tool, not a hobby, my dad would fix things when they went wrong and sometimes I’d help and learn a bit, but other than that, I had it repaired or tagged it for a new one.
Cars were always there and easily accessible, but I had to learn DOS to play video games! Computers are now our dad’s cars.
100% this.
I have even noted a huge deterioration since I have been in the IT industry, and that’s just been since the mid 2000’s
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People have no idea how to do basic process of elimination troubleshooting anymore.
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They have no ability to look at logs and extrapolate what could be going on.
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They don’t understand how to use a search engine effectively anymore or how to rapidly filter through large amounts of information to find answers (I have no idea why)
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The ability to understand how the various bits of tech actually work together and how this is happening seems to be getting more and more lost. So then which things fail people have no idea where to start.
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More and more products as you said “just work”… Until they don’t and give you jack shit to go on.
Basically just “oh… It didn’t work, try again later” nothing is more infuriating than something not working and also giving you no information to troubleshoot, it’s why I am basically allergic to anything made by Apple in particular but this is becoming more and more the standard.
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You’re not alone. The generation raised on the iPhone/iPad struggle to figure out how to use a “real” computer and everything related to it. There’s all sorts of studies about it.
Nah, it’s a thing. Youngest of the Millennial generation and I can concur with your comment after being in IT for a few years - pretty much it’s either Baby Boomers or Gen Z people who have a tough time with technology, with a 50/50 shot of a Gen X person being either super tech savvy or a technological troglodyte. AI has also made things worse since it can now do some light coding, but I’ve seen some people use it to code out entire projects only for it to not work properly at all or break UI on websites.
I’d argue that Gen Z is the worst for the same reasoning in your post: everything works OOTB, and if something goes awry then they don’t know anything or can’t do things the old-fashioned way - which at least Baby Boomers have the option to if they want to be stubborn enough.
also companies make anything beyond basic troubleshooting nearly impossible
I hadn’t really thought about this before, but it’s a pretty good point. Not just the companies who make the tech, but employers and providers seem do just about everything in their power to get you to submit a ticket or (even worse) chat with “support” rather than give you the tools to solve the damn problem yourself.
And the menus/settings you need to make more than superficial changes to your device get buried deeper every year.
There are actually studies already showing this, it’s because they grew up on iPads and apps and everything “just working” or dumbed down. I will look for a source but your anecdote lines up.
Now consumer tech just works. Out of the box you don’t need to tinker or do shit to the stuff.
I have the exact opposite experience , I happen to encounter software glitches nearly every day (especially in shitty apps like Spotify or Todoist) when back in the late 00’s/early 10’s everything worked as expected (except some occasional Windows blue screens or Linux kernel panics I guess), I guess it’s just because how companies design their software for normies and if you happen to use some more advanced features, you will encounter software bugs all the time.
Useful features are removed all the time because apparently marketing departments think that people don’t use them, and some of us depend on some things with no real alternatives.
Error messages were also actually helpful back then, nowadays it’s just “Something happened” or “Unknown error”, good luck finding out what’s the problem with that info.
We need to separate early Gen Z (I’d say 1996-2004) from late Gen Z & Gen Alpha. Early Gen Z was born pre-iPad and mostly used desktops and laptops as they grew up, with iPhones and iPads only becoming available later on. I may be biased being born in '02 but when I spoke to my IT teachers even they said that the younger kids were becoming more and more difficult to teach to the basics of using a desktop OS.
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.
YES!!! I’ve heard the same garbage excuse for people not memorizing a series of letters they used as their password! It’s amazing how lazy some people can be.
i could be thinking this because i grew up around tech but im from 2002 i feel like im WAYYY ahead of the curb for tech problems. NOTHING EVER WORKS and the internet only has solutions that are close to what i need which teaches you how to extrapolate instructions til eventually you hardly need google. making minecraft servers always cause a lot of headache whether it be java not working or port not forwarding. mods not loading or an internet problem causing lag but its a wirlesscard thing not the internet ugh. or just lag in general blah blah
bottom line is im tech support for my friends and my friends are illiterate
Ditto, I have to say I’m appalled on a daily basis how software developers I work with are so foreign with the tools they use to earn a living.
Extremely infuriating as well.
Coming from a simulation software company here, not everyone in my company will know how to deal with servers or IT security and I think it’s ok. The programmers and engineers are brilliant, creative thinkers, all highly educated, but some just never bothered to learn this one thing. It’s almost offensive how our IT department treat the engineers, as if we’ll break anything we touch, but I get it from a security stand point.
As a student, I used to work part time in server maintenance for our uni, that’s how I personally got that knowledge. But even people working in the “tech industry” don’t all have the same sets of skills or tech interests.
You should see my zoomer partner and friend try to work a computer. They all grew up on iPads 😅
I swear I saw a study that basically came to the conclusion that there is a distinct curve in technological literacy where younger generations are used to tech “just working” and not knowing how to navigate anything outside of app-based interface. Take all of this with a handful of salt bc I don’t have source on hand.
This is a very interesting point and I can see it throughout zoomer culture when it comes to the down and dirty technical stuff, but I think there’s a distinction to be made between being technically apt and being able to grok whatever the hot shit consumer-grade tech paradigm is right now.
In the former context, a lot of zoomers have already “failed” but that context is the territory of people who reach out to learn it - in other words, the nitty gritty tech stuff will always be for the technical types. In the latter context, I imagine millennials will probably mostly be fine and zoomers will, too. I say “mostly” because we’re already seeing millennials start to kind of skip the latest trends (TikTok comes to mind immediately). Zoomers are already coming to grips with not being able to understand Alphas sense of humor via memes. Whatever the next social media platform is, I imagine it’ll be primarily a home for Alphas, leaving zoomers and millennials where they are.
Will there be spillover across the board, with members of different generations populating the other platforms? Sure, there are always exceptions.
As far as physical tech goes, like how millennials got the smartphone and zoomers grew up with it? It’s highly dependent on how ingrained it becomes in society. Hard to exist without a smartphone these days, so everybody has to know how to use one. Boomers have more trouble because they got it later, but there are plenty of them who are just fine with current phone tech precisely because they need to be for professional AND personal use.
As a instructor of IT I can absolutely confirm. A lot of Gen Z have not grown up with computers as a tool. I have a class of around 20 students, and maybe 4-5 have any knowledge of the various compression archives. I have to give primers on the proper way to save various file types otherwise they’ll just create default.config.txt (6) and wonder why an install isn’t working.
I thought you said zoomer parents and was about to get really mad and sad at the time.
I mean older Gen Z are 20-24. I’m a millennial and I was a dad at 23 haha. It’s early, but not unreasonably so.
To 26 actually. Gen Z starts in 1997.
Eh the borderline years are all subjective.
But yes. Mid twenties is a reasonable time to start having kids
Heh heh heh, I thought he said Boomer parents and I was wondering where the heck they got iPads
My brother is gen Z and is having a kid this year
Yeah, this is a thing. I know a lot of younger folks who don’t really have a clue about how to do something if they don’t have iOS version whatever or some other bespoke interface. (And no, I’m not a boomer)
CLI ultimately runs the world, and the younger folks who understand CLI are probably at a ratio roughly even to the other generations.
What’s a computer?
Work tech retail, a lot of young people don’t know shit about any tech tbh
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.
There’s actually a regression where millennial who grew up with pc are still the best at it gen z is as bad as boomers. If it’s not an app or website they are lost at even the smallest issue.
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.
Consider switching over to Linux so you can customize your OS however you want 😀
I’m GenX and I also hate the ribbon. 🤬
Exactly, we grew up constantly learning new tech!
I was learning to use computer during the transition to the ribbon in Office 2007, but I actually preferred the ribbon to the old interface and these days I don’t mind it. Out of curiosity, what about the Ribbon annoys you guys?
Lost muscle memory and lost productivity. I didn’t really need to move the mouse much while using word programs, especially Excel. I think Microsoft stated during the transition the top end excel users lost something like 15-20% of their use speed? Something like that.
I actually miss the pop down menus that used to be accessible with the Alt key. Every single functional used to be listed there, albeit some things were sub functions, but the display had both icon and description. Icons alone are kind of annoying.
Ah! The other thing that pisses me off about the ribbon is that some parts of it are not visible until the use initiates a certain work type. Like picture functions are only visible if a picture is selected. What other hidden command groupings exist? A user can go poking around to discover what all Excel can do. Got to stumble into the magic combination of clicks to find what isn’t immediately visible.
I just want to add that OP goes straight from Boomers to Millenials, ignoring Gen X as usual.
Probably a good thing. As long as Gen X isn’t de facto lumped into boomers :-) I’m happy being forgotten in these inter generational wars.
Unfortunately, I think they do look upon us as boomers.
Not at all. I’m a late Gen Xer, almost a millennial. I thrive on learning new technology. I live for it.
I am sure some gen Xers do fail to adapt, but at the end of the day, I don’t even think it’s a generational thing: Some people adapt and keep moving, some people get stuck.
Yeah I know boomers that are more tech savvy than some millennial. Really if you are curious and have an interest, you would keep up even at Biden age
I know a few people who are and do. Even 20+ years ago, I can recall old people who taught very young me all sorts of “cutting edge” tech shit. I had a greybeard teach me about IRQ addresses in the 90s, I’ve since forgotten it all but that’s not really the point.
“Gotta change those jumpers, man!”
In my experience, if anything, late iterations of Gex X tend to be slightly better with new tech than Milennials, because we grew up having to know how it works in order to use it.
In the days of constant blue screen of death.
There seem to be a lot of us GenX /“Xenials” here in the fediverse already and I think that’s why. We don’t need everything handed to us in its final form.
The people that were near that X/Millennial transition are the best at adapting to new tech in my experience. Enough access to have a computer in their formative years but not far enough along for that computer to actually worked well.
Same. Except when teleporters come around. You’ll only teleport me over my dead body.
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Me too
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.
This is 100% it. Worked in IT 15+ years, started with building desktops, servers, virtual machines, building networks, troubleshooting in-depth kernel issues, tracing TCP/IP chatter, which built a really broad platform for my current job as principal cloud architect. I and peers of my vintage understand how to troubleshoot down to a low level, and we understand the implications, benefits risks and constraints of putting certain cloud technologies together even through the multiple levels of abstraction.
We’ve had the benefit of experiencing these technologies grow and develop first hand, we understand how they fit together and where to look when something isn’t working. Recent graduates have not had the benefit of that journey, are so used to operating at the top layer of the abstraction that works most of the time, that I find they really struggle to decompose a problem, simplify and troubleshoot one logical component step at a time. Problem solving is a learned skill and multiple layers of abstraction make knowing where to start very difficult if the error message isn’t crystal clear.
I think there are different aspects. I know how to use that, I’m an IT professional, but people are always asking me “how to do X in Y app” and I have NFI, I don’t use most of the apps and have no plan to.
I get that one a lot and I always ask if I can have a look at it for them but then they turn around and tell me they can’t be bothered. It’s fucking weird. I’m here ready to solve your problem, all you have to do is log in, and you can’t be bothered.
They don’t want you to figure out something that they couldn’t. I can admit I’ve been there.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
My daughter turns 4 soon and I already have an old PC for her birthday painted purple. She will learn the old ways, the ways of our people.
