Younger people are no longer the most computer literate on average. Its between Millennials and Gen X that are the most computer literate generation. Boomers are too old computers weren’t big when they were young. Zoomers are too young, computers became highly simplified during their childhood with the start of web 2.0 into the era of tablet & phone domination.
Alphas are going to be on the other hand completely illiterate, because education is increasingly a joke in the US. Also AI will do everything for them.
AI will do everything for them.
It’s a bubble that will pop any day now.
Which is it?
It will do everything for them, just very badly.
Both. In the same way that the .com bubble crashed on but the internet continued, AI bubble is going to crash but LLM and other ML algorithms are going to continue on.
I built PCs for a living in the early 90s.
Today, there are a lot of younger people than me in the office, and I’m happy to let them believe they have to do all the IT stuff because they’re the most tech savvy.
They’re not. It’s just convenient to have someone do the shit I don’t want to do.
I work in IT and can guarantee this person generates a disproportionate amount of tickets.
Since lemmy is all IT people or people who see helping others with computers as more of a break than annoying extra work, I translated the context.
“I am not a social media manager but I am the youngest volunteer at this non-profit so I am basically the social media manager.”
As a millenial I don’t think this is true anymore, the Gen Z needs a lot of help with computers too. It’s up to Millennials to be the IT
I think this picture is like 12 of 13 years old.
Work and family are quite different for me in this regard!
With the relatives, I’m the IT guy of course. But I haven’t had to do much for others lately since everybody just stares at their phone. In MY house there’s a ton of shit that needs tech support, lol.
At work, sure I’m a software engineer and I might tell a random person I work in tech, but I am not IT. I am an embedded systems developer using my company-owned computer to try to develop a product that will be useful to some people. IT is the sworn enemy!
(to be fair, my employer’s IT is actually cool, and we can install our own OS and use M365 stuff in a browser – they just don’t have the resources to actually help us with anything)
One time when I was early in my field (stationary engineering) I had a funny experience. It was a small boiler room so only one guy on shift at a time. I came in to relive the operator (60s guy retiring that year) and one of our computers was down. It was one we took hourly readings from for something not too important that we could get the same reading from elsewhere. So anyway, he tells me hes entered the password a dozen times and it just doesnt work. We had the password sticky noted to the monitor so I was skeptical. I noticed caps lock was on, turned it off, entered the password and signed right on. His response was “wow thats great. At least someone around here is good with computers”
I’m Gen X and one of the oldest people where I work. Just one person besides me has any true understanding of computers/IT, one year younger than me.
Everyone else is completely lost if the connection between your personal terminal and the office printer fails. Or the cleaning lady has once again managed to release the mystic cables out of their holy sockets.
Sometimes I fix stuff in the terminal just to tease the younger colleagues, then I show them how it can be done with the GUI. They find it baffling that a “not-programmer” can “hack stuff”.
It is both funny and frustrating.
Sadly this seems to no longer be true unless the youngest person in your office is like 30 because kids don’t learn this shit anymore.
Just push control+L and the PDF will be full screen
You mean meta-up, right?
I was going to say, I would count on anyone under 40yo to be able to do anything IT but they are the rulers of social media and gaming so long as it is all plugged in and ready to play. I don’t know what will happen when the last of Gen X retire.
I’d say under 30 is more accurate. Millennials are generally tech savvy.
I’m at the end of GenX. I’m the tech support for the young and the old. FML.
Yeah same. The young know nothing but apps.
You’ll always feel needed, though.
Taken advantage of*. More work, same pay. Everyone still bitching.
It was true 20 years ago, but is it still true nowadays when it’s the 30-40 year olds who mostly grew up with the kind of computer used in business settings whilst the 20 olds usually grew up with smartphones instead?
Eh, it’s a financial background thing nowadays.
I am a Zoomer by age and I was introduced to concept of the home internet during highschool due to living in “not the US” at the time.
Tho I do have absurd amount of trouble with navigating social media UIs so I am slightly tech-illiterate in that context.
That’s why I refused to give my kids consoles and limit access to their phones when reasonable. They’re both PC users. I gave them AutoIT and showed them how to make grinders and autoclickers for Roblox.
not in my workplace
we have to teach people how to navigate directories. mind-blowing
fuck, yesterday I had to explain a local drive map and the user-specific OneDrive folder location to our IT guy (who is 20-25). although I am pretty sure he is a jr tech
God, reminds me of the late 90’s and early 00’s
PM: I don’t know what you’re complaining about with disk space on the public drive, you had duplicate files everywhere.
Me: No, we don’t, There are no duplicates, I run scripts to find that.
PM: BS, All the project stuff on the G drive is duplicated on P drive, don’t worry I deleted it off the G drive for you.
Me: … you what?
PM: I deleted it for you
me: O.O would you go look on the P drive? It’ll be empty now.
PM: nah, I just deleted it from G.
me: go look, those where just drive maps on P pointing back to the
PM: looking scared nuh uh… checks Why, why would be do that?
me: Lead PM asked for a mapping to P: because they disliked typing in G:\Projects. We don’t issue you individual drives because raids are really expensive. Let the PM’s know the files will be back in a couple of hours, I need to go beat up Backup Exec for a while.
oh god
we still regularly get comments “I don’t have access to the [whatever local drive letter OneDrive is using for the user] drive”
like motherfucker IT’S ALL THE SAME FUCKING DRIVE, JUST LOOK AT THE PATH AND FOLLOW THAT ON YOUR LOCAL ONE
I have no idea why Microsoft removed the ability to map OneDrive to a drive letter. we have a third party tool but it sucks.
I’ve even made a two page document (big font and pretty pictures) to explain the difference, and people don’t look at it when they’re onboarded. or their supervisor didn’t add it to the onboarding package.
Can confirm: Most young hires in enterprise are only familiar with iOS and Android, and now maybe prompt “engineering”.
Desktop operation is as challenging for them as anyone.
Totally agree. And I think it’s also compounded by Windows becoming a more hostile OS to power users. There are some shortcuts in Office based on the Menu (! Not the Ribbon !) that still work and I know it’s just a matter of time before those go away too. Really feels like the Dark Ages for PC computing (other than the side effect of the rise of Linux).
Why did they take Ctrl+Shift+S away???
What was that one again? Paste special? Yeah I can’t believe I’ve gotten used to Alt,h,v,s
Save As
We might still have F12 for that, but these days you usually have to Fn key your way to its natural function.
I’ve never heard of F12 for Save As before. Will have to try it next time I’m forced to use Office
Yeah. Adobe Acrobat Pro has become useless as it hid or disabled a lot of their good features.
I’m not IT but I’ve been the only engineer under 50 which meant IT occasionally conscripted me when a problem looked like it might be too physical in origin
Yeah or oldest, anyone reaching adolescence after the advent of the iPhone is reliably dumber with tech than boomers who used a computer for work
Yeah, in my experience in desktop support the older generations usually at least tried something to fix their problem. The younger generations were just like, “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
Gen-X here. I showed my Gen-Z kid how to build a gaming PC, and then he showed his friend how to do it. So, now, they’re the “IT” guys for the group.
The kid has been sitting in front of a computer since he was four. It occurs to me just now that I didn’t really teach him anything about file management, drives, etc. He learned the same way I did, I suppose. By wanting to, and searching for answers. He was the first one to switch to Linux a couple of years ago. I don’t know his motivation for doing it, but it prompted me to make the switch soon after.
