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ajsnigrutinyesterday at 3:16 PM1 replyview on HN

> It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home.

Some of us "a bit older" seem to have gone through a golden era of tech, where we actually learned that tech en-masse. In a class of maybe 30 students, around 20, 25 of them were able to configure dial up modems, come on IRC (servers, ports, channels needed to be configured) and do a bunch of other stuff our parents mostly considered "black magic" (except for a few tech enthusiasts), and the general concensus was, that every generation will know more and be "better" than the previous generation.

A few decades have passed.. and kids can't type anymore on a keyboard, can't print, have no idea what can be changed in the settings on their smartphone, don't know how to block ads, can't cheat in games anymore (except via pay-to-win) and have no idea where to change their instagram password.

So, now you have boomers, who can't use computers and kids, who can't use computers anymore.


Replies

TheOtherHobbesyesterday at 4:35 PM

Boomers are split between a demographic that is very computer literate, having worked in/around science and tech for decades, and a demo that isn't remotely literate and may not even be online.

The latter is a fairly small demo though - supposedly around a third.

The split is more by education than by age.

Kids can use computers - phones - as app appliances, but they don't understand computers.

Peak literacy is young Gen X and older millennials.