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Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

blog.mysunland.org

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Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#71

Post by Izkata »

neonate wrote: post #62
Izkata wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opening paragraph indicates the writer is a teen though.

(I think that's p1necone's point about why they're taking rc-5 seriously.)

Zeyphros> Many teachers and parents believe the younger generation know more about technology and “computers” then their own generation. They believe the teens of today know more about computers because we grew up with them, we have always used them and use them for almost every task.

rc-5> Allow me to preface this by saying that I am, in fact, a teen [nearly completely disagrees with Zeyphros]

p1necone> [thanks to rc-5] I take everything written about teenagers from the perspective of anyone >~20 with a huge grain of salt

I read it as p1necone assuming Zeyphros is an out-of-date >20-year-old, which at least appears to not be the case (as of 2016, when the post was written).

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#73

Post by derefr »

tapland wrote: post #52
rc-5 wrote: post #32

Allow me to preface this by saying that I am, in fact, a teen, and absolutely do not represent the majority of teenagers. This post is a generalization and a subjective rant that absolutely doesn't hold up in real life. >>>When you explain what happens under the hood, they will ignore you. When you tell them what a certain setting probably does, they will ignore you. In my experience, although there may be some teena…

I think you are missing where the author is coming from. People knew how to use websites and applications in the early 2000s as well, but with the advent of home computers, WWW and smartphones there was a widespread belief that, by nature of being surrounded by tech, young people would automatically learn how it worked under the surface and possess an inherent fluency in IT. That didn't happen. It's still people inte…

On the other hand, a lot of things that seemed hard really did just turn out to be unfamiliar.

Word processing, for example: if you expect a five-year-old to learn it as a matter of course on the way to do other things, they can and will.

There's probably a bunch of things like that. Little things. Kids know how to set reminders/create calendar events. Teens can intuit the usage of ACLs in multi-channel group chats like Discord servers. Nobody has to tell kids to google the text of an installation error for the game they were trying to install. Anyone born in the last 25 years will intuitively think to search for a video tutorial for any new micro-skill. Etc.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#76

Post by gumby »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #40
gumby wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification! I originally had typed "1 in 10,000" but that seemed too many kids....and it turns out I was utterly wrong!

turns out I was UDDERLY wrong! Long day. I’ll be here all week!

I suppose you recommend the...veal.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#78

Post by gumby »

craftinator wrote: post #68
Johnny555 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not one in 100,000 could milk a cow. I know this wasn't your point, but I'll nitpick anyway since that number felt too low, so I checked, and the number seems like it should be closer to 1 in 200. There are 72M children [1] below the age of 18 in the USA today, so 1 in 100,000 would only be 720 and there's something like 40,000 dairy farms in the USA, and I'd bet every child on those farms older than 8 (probably youn…

Damn, Johnny. Remind me not to post unsubstantiated statistics around you.

That's the point of commenting on HN.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#79

Post by Mirioron »

p1necone wrote: post #41
rc-5 wrote: post #32

Allow me to preface this by saying that I am, in fact, a teen, and absolutely do not represent the majority of teenagers. This post is a generalization and a subjective rant that absolutely doesn't hold up in real life. >>>When you explain what happens under the hood, they will ignore you. When you tell them what a certain setting probably does, they will ignore you. In my experience, although there may be some teena…

Thanks for this, I take everything written about teenagers from the perspective of anyone >~20 with a huge grain of salt, because I'm not old enough to forget yet how completely and utterly out of touch adults were about my generation of teenagers when I was younger.

What I've realized is that this is not a generational issue. It's an issue with generalizations. A large part of teens probably are clueless about a lot of things, as are a large part of each adult generation.

On the point of remembering being a teenager: it baffles me that so many adults seem to have forgotten what being a teenager is like. Adults often, at the same time, expect too much of teenagers, but also expect too little. It's quite bizarre.

Re: Teens don't have a clue about IT? (2016)

#80

Post by Ididntdothis »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
tmpz22 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with your summary I think the OP brushes against another point I think is really important: a large number of users do not care to optimize their own experience for ~some~ reason, even when the lack of optimization has a significant opportunity cost. As software developers we pull our hair out trying to architect around this issue... and we usually fail hard. I could guess an infinity of potential cause…

> a large number of users do not care to optimize their own experience for ~some~ reason, even when the lack of optimization has a significant opportunity cost. A large proportion of people don’t even optimize their bedroom, and probably a huge proportion for teens and young adults. It’s lack of caring about long term benefits and focusing on short term benefits. Or laziness. Or procrastination. Or whatever you want…

“A large proportion of people don’t even optimize their bedroom, and probably a huge proportion for teens and young adults. It’s lack of caring about long term benefits and focusing on short term benefits. Or laziness. Or procrastination. Or whatever you want to call it.”

maybe they think they have more important things to worry about?

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