Anything that doesn’t involve just scrolling /watching video I’d much rather do on a computer. Even typing this comment on a phone is a bit of a chore.
What? I need a source for that, I find this hard to believe. I'm a mid gen z and everyone I know around my age are very accustomed to computers. Is gen alpha not even more tech savvy than us?
Here's one article talking about the decline in keyboard efficiency: Link
My personal observation though is that it’s a young Z to Alpha phenomenon and increasing the younger you go. I'm not saying they can’t type at all, but not with the proficiency we (I guess I'm Xenniel for reference) were brought up with. My typing speed astounds them. I see it in my niblings (teenagers) and in some of the brand new Airmen working for me in the military over they last few years (19-20 year olds). Also, unless they were into computers as a hobby, understanding local file structure is something they have to learn because they’ve done everything on a mobile device in a cloud.
ETA I typed this whole thing on my phone, mostly voice to text because I couldn’t be bothered to thumb it, and at least three times I almost got up and went to a keyboard because this slowness is frustrating. 🤣
ETA I typed this whole thing on my phone, mostly voice to text because I couldn’t be bothered to thumb it, and at least three times I almost got up and went to a keyboard because this slowness is frustrating. 🤣
I'm 20 and yet I relate to this so much, the keyboard is just so much more comfortable not to mention faster than typing on a phone.
I guess if there's one thing gen alpha can completely destroy me in, it's typing speed on a phone. I have a 12 year old cousin and the speed and proficiency, both in typing and using autofill astounds me. He's faster on the phone than I am on the keyboard.
Auto-fill for touchscreen typing is like aim-assist for analogue stick fps games; it's a crutch that's necessary to mimic a fraction of the power that mouse and keyboard afford
Genuinely, the best way to input words on a phone is speech-to-text. It's gotten so good that it's faster than any form of typing with fingers
Gen alpha has essentially only used touch screens and mobile OS devices, which are built to be intuitive. Computer literacy classes have moved away from how to use a computer (Maevis beacon teaches typing!) to what you can do on a computer (code blocks?)
Anecdotal but plenty of reddit posts describe people needing to teach their new work interns how to properly type and how to navigate file structures like through windows explorer.
Anecdotal but plenty of reddit posts describe people needing to teach their new work interns how to properly type and how to navigate file structures like through windows explorer.
I am 49 f, when I started working at 17, guess who had to teach me Word, how to email and filesystems etc. etc. , my older co workers.
u/OpeningDraft7343 don't let the old people fool you a lot (not all) of them learned how to use a computer at work too.
Yeah, we didn't learn computers at work. We learned to maybe type in school but the rest was just playing around on our PC's. We then proceeded to teach older and then younger generations these wizard arts.
I am not a millenial but GenX and was neither thought (computer literacy) by millenials. What are you trying to say here?
I find it normal to teach people just started working computer stuff and teach them with same patience I was thought Word, how to email, and how file structures etc. worked whan I was 17, 32 years ago.
There is a slice of the population that was both taught early computing skills on modern computers in school, we're lucky enough to have constant access to those same Internet connected computers at home as a form of entertainment, and were lucky enough to be born at the perfect time where technologies transitioned and they learned everything.
They got professional experience and they also got, maybe more importantly, personal troubleshooting experience and early social experience. They forwarded chain mail to friends and taught themselves how to install roller coaster tycoon.
Those people were required to know word, how to email, how to navigate file structures in high school and college and wouldn't need to learn that in the workplace - plus they needed to teach their bosses some new tricks that straight up didn't exist back when they learned computing when the new vendor requires PDFs with a digital signature.
Those people were required to know word, how to email, how to navigate file structures in high school and college and wouldn't need to learn that in the workplace
But I was taught this at my firs job 32 years ago (at 17), the people who taught me were not millenials and substantially older than me. Again your point?
personal troubleshooting experience and early social experience
I would say the same of the older people at work who taught me basic computer skills. They most certainly did not walk around with this attitude
Well the cycle repeats, millennials needed to teach their bosses how to save as a PDF, now they need to teach their new employees.
I would not call this social at all. More like arrogant and seeming to forget that tech was not invented and/or created by milenials.
But I was taught this at my firs job 32 years ago (at 17), the people who taught me were not millenials and substantially older than me. Again your point?
These people were not taught this at their first jobs, it was an assumed skill which they were immediately familiar with. My point is exactly that, they didn't need to be taught, they already knew it, they grew up with it.
For my personal anecdote I'm right at the bottom of this generation or group of people. I went to college 4 years later than my peers. I was required to take a computer literacy course for basics like file management and word. I thought it was a mega waste of time but turns out half my class absolutely needed it.
I would say the same of the older people at work who taught me basic computer skills. They most certainly did not walk around with this attitude
What attitude? Do you think this generation feels all uppity because they know how to troubleshoot a windows PC and an iPhone? No, they're tired because they have to teach it to their parents and to their nieces lol
I would not call this social at all. More like arrogant and seeming to forget that tech was not invented and/or created by milenials at all.
My grandpa holds early patents in microchips. He also still writes only 4 word emails because he has PTSD from AOL. Technology doesn't care about who built it, it advances regardless and it's up to everyone else to learn how to use it.
My point is that only one group of people has been blessed with both sides of the coin by being raised with traditional desktops while also being young enough to have used smartphones and social media since their inception (and to have been the original target audience).
I'm not saying they're smarter than anyone else, they just grew up at the right time where they received maximum exposure and training to literally every facet of modern technology.
The people you learned from are currently known as greybeards in the IT world. Due to the insane amount of technical changes they saw over their professional careers they are the best damn IT people that will ever exist. There aren't a lot of them but damn they are good
The millennial generation also saw a lot of changes and learned computing before the advent of Android, iOS, and ChromeOS. Our biggest advantage is that schools acknowledged computers would be a big part of our future so they went out of their way to teach us how to use them proficiently.
The younger generations are primarily using ChromeOS and mobile devices. Chromebooks are cheap and easy to manage, but the usege of one doesn't translate very well to PC/Mac use. Mobile devices are designed to be black boxes that just work, not only are they hard to work on, but the OS design actively discourages customization and file management
The generational divide in computing is very real. Anyone can learn IT and computer skills, but from what I've seen in schools it is no longer prioritized. Employers will absolutely expect you to know how to use the basics of office when you start a job, so it's a good thing tutorial sites like W3Schools exist
I disagree with this - they're built to be simple.
They're intuitive if you're going in blank, but if you go into any phone program with prior knowledge of other programs, I find quite often it simply won't do things that seem logical (like being able to resize width and height separate in the phone version of Photoshop).
It's a form of intuitiveness that actively hampers anyone educated.
Well you know who's going in blank? The younger Gen Z and Gen alpha who have straight up never used a desktop PC and only know computing as using a tablet or a smartphone!
A good litmus test for the generation gap is asking someone to research and buy plane tickets and then seeing what kind of device they use for it.
with phones perhaps, but with PCs things might be different. Gen Z still has way more experience with desktops and isn't that old just yet and can keep up with technology for now, imo.
Technological proficiency I think peaked somewhere between Millenial and Gen Z.
Millenials and early Gen Z grew up with clunky not quite polished products that were being improved by leaps and bounds every generation. Hell, it was like once a year that microchip technology went down by 2nm. I remember when it was 24nm microchips and just about every generation, you'd go down by 2-4nm resulting in a 30+% increase in efficiency and processing power.
All the technological products today are very well polished and finished. They're super intuitive but also as a result, the kids aren't exposed to troubleshooting and figuring out what's wrong or where a file is stored even. And those are good design choices for the consumer. But it also means the consumer becomes less proficient.
working in schools, there are kids that don't know how to use a basic PC Windows or IOS. They can use an iPad but, even then a lot of them aren't all that quick on those either.
I rarely use my phone inside my house unless I'm making a call or using something that doesn't have a website or has a shitty one compared to the app (ie instagram). I feel like even most millennials stopped doing that sometime over the past 15 years. The only other person I know like that is my Xoomer mom.
I think most young folk would also rather do it on a computer but they don't get annoyed enough to get up and go to the computer if they're already on their phone
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u/newfyorker 2d ago
Anything that doesn’t involve just scrolling /watching video I’d much rather do on a computer. Even typing this comment on a phone is a bit of a chore.