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andrepd • yesterday at 7:23 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

Kids today are alarmingly bad at technology. This is not a "kids these days" situation, this is absolutely true. They understand "tap on icon, open app, there's a feed and DMs".

I mean it, the tech illiteracy of gen Z/alpha is out of this world, I did not expect a generation that grew up with technology to be so inept, but here we are. But they grew up with a 4x4 grid of app icons, not with a PC.

Replies

nhhvhy • yesterday at 8:23 PM

I don’t think people understand the true level of tech illiteracy of Gen Z. A couple years back I did an internship with the IT guy at my high school, and the vast majority of the problems students had with the Chromebooks we used were, in no specific order:

  - Not understanding that a dead battery means it won’t turn on
  - Trying to use them without an internet connection
  - “The screen won’t work” when trying to non-touchscreen models like a tablet
  - “I can’t see my stuff” when using the guest mode rather than their login, or when they used a PC and they couldn’t see the docs icon on their desktop
That’s not even to mention the abysmal typing skills of most students, so many 15WPM hunt-and-peck typers..

There’s a mountain of issues along those lines we ran into, and it was honestly frightening to watch.

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subscribed • yesterday at 8:10 PM

Correct. From my personal experience (have kids and nieces/nephew this age), and all think an app is the thing that they scroll in, and any attempt to explain the very basics on internet connectivity, servers, databases, etc, ends up in them basically experiencing blue screen moment and backing away to the safety of the endless scroll.

The most complex concept they can understand is mail/post attachment or capcut, but then this is it. 10 minutes later they will download phone flashlight app that requires Google services for app delivery.

Shocking.

I ended up with refusing to help with anything related to technology in any other way than pointing to help/manual/search engines and asking questions.