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

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

#151

Post by ketzu »

joezydeco wrote: post #9

The motivation is different, that’s all. When we were kids we needed to learn to hack DOS and Windows because our games wouldn’t run without them. Hard drive crashes, SCANDISK, reinstalls, fucked up drivers... whatever it took. My kids can’t fix Win10 but now they know their way around web filters and how to hack Screen Time to bypass the shutoff. They’re trading pirated movies in gDrive and doing all kids of other s…

I feel like people on here overestimate the tech literacy their peers learned when they were kids. While the computer-interested group around me did some experimentation, a little bit of programming and the like, most people I knew didn't do any of that.

Most things just worked: Put the floppy inside, click on the correct icon [1], maybe type in one thing or click on the file with the correct ending/name that sounded like the game, and your game was running. I did not know what I was doing, just remembering what I was shown.

Later as a teenager, I was asked to help out by other teens much more than my mother asked me to help.

[1]: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-hEMIuqfC17M/VRbHvgeiw_I/A...

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

#152

Post by lotsofpulp »

egypturnash wrote: post #101
lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How exactly does one optimize their bedroom anyway?

I meant keeping it organized or clean.

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

#153

Post by cm2187 »

I am trying to help juniors in a financial institution to pick up programming. What is interesting is that it is a skill a lot of people wish they had, and lots of people sign up. But very few follow through when they realise what it means in practice.

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

#154

Post by raxxorrax »

jcranmer wrote: post #85
tapland wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Probably any millennial will recognize this picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deanwhitney/3926151592/ -- it's Microsoft Word of the late 90s, with every single toolbar enabled. I'm sure all of us, at one point or another, will have discovered how to enable every toolbar and then do so for pure entertainment value. In my experience (admittedly, that's a pretty narrow experience), kids are insatiably curious. They…

The current Word UI isn't that much of an improvement to be honest and would look similar with such a low resolution. Some things are better, some things are worse, but I doesn't look like 20 years brought any deeper insights.

The disadvantage kids today might have is that there aren't any buttons, because their systems are locked down to a large degree. You cannot do experiments this way so no knowledge can be gained. Without disputing the VCRs or comparable technological artifacts had a bad UI. You are pretty limited if you use iOS or Android. Sure, some teens would figure out how to use them efficiently, but that would only be a small percentage.

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

#155

Post by giornogiovanna »

cm2187 wrote: post #153

I am trying to help juniors in a financial institution to pick up programming. What is interesting is that it is a skill a lot of people wish they had, and lots of people sign up. But very few follow through when they realise what it means in practice.

> what it means in practice.

What do you mean? Do they think it's boring, or that it's too complicated, or that it's useless, or something else?

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

#156

Post by newsgremlin »

Thinking back to my adolescence, there were few that were that proficient and similar observations could have been made, being able to use limewire and the office suite was about as technical as it got for my late millennial class.

I think we are getting smarter overall, but I don't expect it to be the norm, it requires a societal shift away from distracting platforms and entertainment that don't facilitate the need to explore and learn.

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

#157

Post by cm2187 »

giornogiovanna wrote: post #155
cm2187 wrote: post #153

I am trying to help juniors in a financial institution to pick up programming. What is interesting is that it is a skill a lot of people wish they had, and lots of people sign up. But very few follow through when they realise what it means in practice.

> what it means in practice. What do you mean? Do they think it's boring, or that it's too complicated, or that it's useless, or something else?

I think it’s a mix of it is hard work and not to their taste.

Which I think is fine. I am talking to a population who didn’t lean toward engineering in their education and career choices. But my point is that their might be some curiosity, just not the appetite to pay the cost of understanding how the sausages are made.

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

#158

Post by ljf »

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…

I never remember anyone thinking we'd all understand how it worked under the hood, but that we'd all learn how to make it part of our lives and make use of the tools that plenty of older people had no interest in learning or using.

My dad refused to learn to use a pc for years (until he wanted to research some architecture and suddenly he got the point of it all). But he still hasn't made computers or the Internet part of his life in the way most 18 year olds have.

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

#159

Post by cm2187 »

ketzu wrote: post #151
joezydeco wrote: post #9

The motivation is different, that’s all. When we were kids we needed to learn to hack DOS and Windows because our games wouldn’t run without them. Hard drive crashes, SCANDISK, reinstalls, fucked up drivers... whatever it took. My kids can’t fix Win10 but now they know their way around web filters and how to hack Screen Time to bypass the shutoff. They’re trading pirated movies in gDrive and doing all kids of other s…

I feel like people on here overestimate the tech literacy their peers learned when they were kids. While the computer-interested group around me did some experimentation, a little bit of programming and the like, most people I knew didn't do any of that. Most things just worked: Put the floppy inside, click on the correct icon [1], maybe type in one thing or click on the file with the correct ending/name that sounded…

In the 90s, people had the excuse of not having the internet. As a kid in the 90s, I sort of knew I wanted to do more advanced stuff with my computer. I saw some ads in a computer magazine about a software to write software. So I bugged my mum into buying me Code Warrior for MacOS. I found myself in front of a white text editor, no indication of what to do next, no one around me who knew anything about programming, I had not even heard of C++.

As I result I didn’t get into programming before university.

Kids today have way less excuses. Between easier languages and libraries, better tools, way more resources available at their fingertips, much higher concentration of people knowledgeable around them, way more fun things they can do with computers, and a generally accepted idea that being good with computers is a good thing career wise (in the 90s it was often seen by parents as merely a sophisticated game console).

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

#160

Post by donkeyd »

derefr wrote: post #73
tapland wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> Nobody has to tell kids to google the text of an installation error for the game they were trying to install.

I'm not sure what kids you're referring to, but when I look at my 14 yo sister and her friends, nearly all they know how to do is start Snapchat. If they'd get a cryptical error they'd call a family member to fix it for them. I feel like millenials have broader knowledge of computers than the newer generations, because these days most things just work. And when iPhones don't work, you don't really get error messages or debugging tools, they just don't work.

When I was young, stuff didn't just work. I could tell by the sound of my dial up modem whether it would succesfully connect. I could modify the registry to fix problems, I could put more RAM in my PC if it became too slow and it would take hours to reinstall Windows. This is not true anymore. Kids these days use more computers that no longer allow this type of tinkering (Apple devices, Consoles, etc.). A small group though, still builds gaming PCs and buys a Raspberry Pi to tinker with. It's no longer a necessity to be able to get on the internet though, it's a choice.

The issue with your statement is that it generalizes. In the end, there are still lots of kids without a clue how things work and a bunch of them who do. It's kind of like car ownership. Most people will drive one, but most won't have a clue how to change a spark plug. You can't make a statement about this that applies to a whole generation, however.

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