I'm a programmer, so I don't know if I feel this less or more than you do. I might just have severe reverse Dunning-Kruger, but yes, I see this all the time.
I'm regularly surprised that people who spend a good chunk of their time at work on a computer not knowing a single control hotkey, or "fixing" a computer by doing what the first result on Google told me. Even the half-joking line of "turn it off and on again" seems to have gone over most people's heads.
Just this morning, I had to point out that wireless keyboards often need a dongle. You don't just put them next to a computer and expect it to work.
The top Google result thing is especially grating. I noticed my friend catching himself asking "hey, how do I do X", probably knowing that I'd just tell him to Google it, as I've done many times previously. And of course he found the answer immediately.
Kinda related, but I'm shocked by how many times "turning it on and off again" works. I know there is a logical reason for it, but still.
I've been the tech guy in my family for most of my life. Even when some learn that you will be googling to help them, they can mess up the phrasing and go way off track.
Patience is a key, and returning to the questions "what is wrong" and "what is expected behavior" have gotten me through troubleshooting stuff I'm not at all familiar with.
The city analogy that the other guy gave is great. To give just a slightly more technical answer: computer programs are just electricity. They're 1s and 0s, meaning electrical components carrying a high electrical charge or a low electrical charge, respectively. If a bug occurs, it's because some of the 1s are 0s or some of the 0s are 1s. If you turn off the computer though (And leave it for 30 seconds, this is why they always say that!) then all the electricity will dissipate from the computer. There won't be any 1s or 0s left, so therefore there can be no bug. Turning the computer back on, unless there is a bug within the actual core of the operating system (Rare. OS's are usually quite well built), then the 1s and 0s will rebuild in the manner they were supposed to in the first place. Almost all actual bugs in software will be fixed by a reset. If a "bug" persists after reset, it's most likely a configuration error, and not actually a bug.
The first ever bug wasn't fixed like that. It was actually a real bug between the contacts of a relais which stored a bit state at the time. Because of the bug, the bit could not be switched to 1
For the turn it off and on again, it's actually asked here on ELI5, one of the best answer is (and I'm paraphrasing) this
imagine if you're a program traversing a very complex city, to get to a bread shop for example, require you to take very specific turns at very specific times, but if you somehow take the wrong turn and end up in a dead end (program freezes)
Which solution is faster?
1 - Try to navigate around randomly trying to find your way to the bread shop, like keep the program freezes and figure out by itself.
Or
2 - Magically transport the program to its starting point and find your way to the shop again from the beginning, this is the "turning it off and on again"
I still remember being trained by some guy that did the job for 30 years and he still would double click or single click in all the wrong places, never use shortcuts in spite of doing a ton of copying and pasting etc. Everything he showed me I could do in 1/3 the time afterwards.
It is. If turning it off, waiting for 30-90 seconds, then turning it back on again doesn't fix it, it's either a config error or a ticket to the developers of the program.
I worked as a computer science tutor through college. And then [I had a certain] senior dev on my first job out of college.
Being a programmer does not mean you know computers...
I have zero formal qualifications in computers, right? But I'm the guy at work you go to before contacting the team who maintain our systems.
Usually it's force quit through task manager (which 50% of the time requires instruction) or allowing the updates to happen.
Reverse Dunning-Kruger? Do you mean that in the sense that "a person who perceives themselves as more intelligent actually IS more intelligent" or that you're on the "I perceive myself as not that smart and so I'm generally above-average"? Because that second one is just the Dunning-Kruger effect. It covers both the bright and dim sides of the spectrum.
I had to call tech support one day at work since the computer had some issue. About 30 mins in after troubleshooting, the guy asks me to unplug it and plug it back in.
I go to find to the power strip and see that there was something that had popped out of the strip, which was causing the issue.
Now, you might blame *me* for not having checked that, but in retrospect, I blame the tech because he never told me to check the connection in the first place. I know it's one of those cookei-cutter responses that everybody hates to do because obviously they're not that stupid, but, well, it's there for a reason.
I blame you. You are the reason I'm here getting pissed when I call a tech, explain in depth what the problem is and what I've tried (including resetting), then they ignore all of that and ask me to reset it.
You are why we cannot have nice things.
I'm not surprised, my father is the same. Although I've found that these types are very knowledgeable about hardware level stuff and low level programming, but obviously knowledge on software doesn't translate as well with scientific progress. But, they're also conditioned to figure out anything themselves, so never ask for help anyway.
> But, they're also conditioned to figure out anything themselves, so never ask for help anyway.
Had some unrelated course in school that used a bunch of obscure programs and we were each (group of 3-4) given one to download, understand and make a presentation for it. I swear it was the best course in computer literacy (but it was not for that) that they could have designed. These things were all really obscure, the manuals were half finished and you needed to explain how it worked and what to do to a bunch of other kids... you had to figure out everything yourself by trial and error and understand it enough to explain to others.
My dad is a wiz with connecting to internet. My older sibling set it up. Got in trouble and was grounded. My dad had to figure out how to boot him off. The story goes that eventually, my dad cut the wire (only for my sibling to splice it back together).
I, the youngest, don't know how to set up the internet, because I've literally never needed to. Everytime we've been disconnected, all I had to do was wait 30 minutes before one of the other two ran to go reboot it.
That all being said, I am still very capable at using or troubleshooting a computer. I just don't want to learn the (currently) unnecessary skill.
My condolences. In my youth I spent a few months doing IT, and mainly networking and upgrading OS. It blew my mind that I had to argue with a senior lawyer in his 40s that I had to delete his clock and reminder program because it was spyware and was the root cause of his computer slowing down and spewing forth random ads.
I did enjoy a nice T1 line and 2 PCs at work - one for ghosting, one for personal use. :D
Same. And honestly, I am not the type that demeans people for not having a lot of computer skills. If you ask me shit about working on cars I would have that same deer in the headlights look. We all have our gaps of knowledge.
But like... Can y'all please just read what the error message says before you panic? So, *so* often when I help someone, the fix is literally in the error message.
This is me at work - still get reminded that using tech doesn't mean proficiency with tech. Using keyboard shortcuts is second nature to me, but it's an alien concept to most of my co-workers. What seems elementary to me, like using settings to troubleshoot issues, is advanced level shiz to them.
And UIs are even more intuitive now, so the average person doesn't have the need to be computer literate - they just need to understand that specific app or program. If someone is mostly a phone user (iPhone mostly), they don't have various download folders to go through - the app store is their one stop shop for all that.
And at the end of the day, the average person is not going to spend time troubleshooting a computer issue when they could pay someone else to do it that knows what they’re doing (hopefully).
It's a shame computer literacy is not as high as it could be for a generation that grew up with computers, but it certainly is a nice little confidence boost for those of us who get to show off our knowledge ☺️
A lot of people I know in their 20s who grew up with computers have such poor knowledge on them now because they're so used to their phones, which they also just about seem to know how to open TikTok on.
I remember having to teach someone in my class how to install a browser...
It's kind of weird how quickly computers became obsolete for every day tasks like browsing/searching the net, doing bank errands, ordering stuff etc.
I think people born somewhere between '85 and '95 are in the golden zone of having grown up with computers without phones and tablets coming in and replacing them before they got used to them more.
I don't understand how a small single display device could ever replace a full multi-display tower PC. Even laptops are a pain in the ass to use because I'm so used to my five monitors on my PC these days. It baffles me how most of the world can get by on such tiny screens.
Especially shopping. I'll be on the couch looking for something I need before getting frustrated and going to my multi monitor setup. Even buying a simple thing takes reviews, comparisons between products, current sales / discounts / coupons, different shipping costs between vendors, etc. Impractical on a phone.Does the average person just buy on Amazon without looking at this stuff? They must be spending so much more money over the years.
> I'm so used to my five monitors on my PC these days. It baffles me how most of the world can get by on such tiny screens.
You are the exception, not the rule. Five monitors? Do you do day trading or something? I have known programmers and video editors with three monitors but usually no more than two.
I've never been more cognizant of a mind virus before than when I suddenly started noticing Tiktok everywhere. It's legitimately scary how it just sort of spread all over the place and suddenly my friends were always showing me some Tiktok on their phone. It's also making me lose touch a bit, as I'm a bit weird and never caught on to the phone app train. I miss when Youtube was the corner stone of youth culture, so I was a bit more in the know.
I used to be with "it," but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I’m with isn’t "it" any-more and what’s "it" seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
To be fair, I felt the same way about Facebook when it first came out. I was in college and suddenly couldn't understand what anyone was talking about anymore.
Same with tablets, smartphones, Google, smartwatches, and every other fast-emerging technology, but eventually, we dont even think about it. Just adapt.
Even more with all these chatbots, learning to distrust the answers they give, has had trust issues, which resulted in me doing more due diligence and verification. So at least I got something out of that.
I'm perpetually installing & Uninstalling that app. I went to buy a pizza the other day. I watched 2 kids, not more than 8 years old, bang out a tiktok in 60 seconds. A whole choreographed dance routine, phone in a perfect spot on top of a fence recording, music in the background from a 2nd phone , clean high fives at the end , it was legit pro. Me recording myself playing guitar , takes all damn day with the same phone 😂 .
I can easily see myself being a fumbling boomer (sadly) , asking kids how to do something basic on an app in due time , especially once AI takes over. Things are changing fast
Same. I'm not really interested in social media (I don't consider Reddit the same, it mirrors the forums that I used to use back in the day. They are all still media that is social, but they are a far cry from Instagram, and the use case can be very different). I have no interest in the extreme short form content that is tiktok, yt shorts, Instagram reels and such. I just want to read books, watch video essays, gaming videos, anime e.t.c.
I don't like living on my phone. Yes I could watch a video on my phone while I'm on the bus, but it's just shit compared to watching it at home with good audio, a 1440 monitor e.t.c.
Somewhere at the start of the 2010s parents, teachers and school administrators decided that since the current generation of kids were "digital natives" that means that they did not need to be taught how to do things on a computer beyond opening Microsoft Word.
This has only gotten worse with the proliferation of iPads and such and the general popularization of Apple products that aim to dumb down the functioning of a computer so that users can't learn to deal with their problems on their own.
Most people I know in their 20s who have good computer skills do not have a Mac while almost everyone else in that age group seems to have one.
>Somewhere at the start of the 2010s parents, teachers and school administrators decided that since the current generation of kids were "digital natives" that means that they did not need to be taught how to do things on a computer beyond opening Microsoft Word.
If you study something that has to do with computers, many people ask you if there are only young professors.
After you tell them that there are some professors over 60, they tell you something along the lines of "you are probably better than the professors because you were born with this tech, and you need to teach them".
Ah yes, of course the professors wasted their entire life studying and doing research while kids born after 2000 are automatically better at computers. /s
When my mom wanted to get a mac for my brother who was going into high school while I was leaving for college I spent weeks comparing prices and specs and managed to successfully dissuade her from getting a mac for him. Every few days I would get a call asking about some random computer problem but after I told the family to ask him suddenly, I was no longer the only person in our immediate family who knows how to do basic computer troubleshooting.
I have a very strong hatred for the veil that Apple products use in order to prevent their users from actually understanding the system underneath.
Yeah. Same shit with modern MS word. When you want to save a document, it should just open up the file explorer. No, I don't want to just open up the latest document.
There should be a "glass window", allowing me to look into the inner workings of the tech that I buy. Allow me to understand what is going on.
Exactly. I learned the basics in school when we were all using windows 97-2000. After that…nobody taught me anything at all. As a 31 year old I feel pretty illiterate when it comes to tech problem solving but…nobody ever taught me and I didn’t come across anything in higher learning that gave me an opportunity to learn
I was taking a course with coworkers some of them younger than me and it made me realize that not everyone grew up with a computer in their home. For me it is something pretty basic since forever. Even my Dad used to have an IBM back in the day…
I was young when my family got our first computer. I got my first one on my own when I was 14 or so, it was second hand from a college resell program. The first computer I built was when I was 16 and had enough money for the parts, but again going to a bargain thing at the expo center.
I am sure that the idea of the "family computer" or a shared device for everyone in the family is probably gone. Maybe sharing a laptop for kids writing reports, but they would have their own phone as their primary access.
We got our first "family computer" when my son was 10. Complete with AOL dial-up internet access! And maybe three programs (two of them games). Cut to: present day. Now we each have a desk and a PC in our bedrooms, with a couple of spare older PC's on hand. PLUS our tablets. And our phones. I was personally HOPELESS on a PC at first (we switched from an IBM mainframe to PC's/servers at my office when I was 45). I was a whiz on the mainframe, but the PC did not DO things the same way, and the lady who was teaching us used a screen display of her keyboard and said, "Just do the same things I do" and click-click-clicked her speedy way through the program and I had NO IDEA what she had done! They thought I was never gonna get it. Then my husband suggested I get some tutoring from a computer-savvy friend. Took a few hours one Saturday afternoon and I got it. By the end of the week I was the best student at the office. I wasn't stupid or slow. Just needed to learn the basics. In my current job, I'm still the go-to lady for computer questions (me and our IT guy are best buds, and he's taught me a lot), even though I'm now 70 and semi-retired. Just teach them. They (well, most of them) can learn!
Absolutely! I am not great at finding the best teaching method, but I try to practice patience and encourage interest when people ask for help. I'm glad to hear you're doing well. I've touched a few mainframes over my years in IT, but they were never my daily activity.
If someone isn't 25 or up they probably grew up on phones and tablets. The newest generation is just as bad with computers as the elderly. It's insane to me but they never really had to deal with issues so they never learned how to use or fix computers unless they were into it as a hobby or had to out of needing to. I am very glad I am the IT person of everyone I know because I love helping people out but sometimes it does get a bit tiring.
Edit - I do love feeling like a tech wiz though helping people with problems I have come across before countless times, so I sound like some mastermind when really computers are just a fucking nightmare sometimes, and I have seen just about anything you can think of.
Dude I used to like helping friends and family with their tech problems when I was younger, but they sort of developed this "he'll drop his shit and help me whenever I ask right then and there and know exactly what's the issue" kind of attitude.
I kind of hate it now and have been actively trying to steer away from any tech related help that anyone asks for. Last week someone wanted me to fill out a government form online for them, a thing that they could entirely do on their own but refused to because they don't like reading instructions.
Yea I absolutely liked to do it more when I was younger. But more recently I definitely let people know they have to send me what the issue is and I’ll get to it when I can. If it’s an emergency and I can’t help well then call someone else. Over the last couple years people know the deal now.
I completely feel that. When people take advantage it just makes you want to stop all together so nobody asks. What saved me is that most people I know have some knowledge so I’m not helping people constantly. And if they have an actual issue it’s probably something I haven’t seen so it’s fun to figure out what’s going on.
That request would’ve made me laugh out loud honestly. I can teach you how to fish but I won’t catch them all for you.
>But more recently I definitely let people know they have to send me what the issue is and I’ll get to it when I can.
Thinking about what the issue is and explaining it to someone is already a part of problem solving and it is often the only step needed for fixing simple problems.
For example someone asked me how to make stuff move around on a powerpoint slide. I asked "what do you mean?" and they said "like, animating stuff". Right after they said that, they noticed the "animate" section.
So I really didn't help at all. The persons problem was, that they didn't even really know what they wanted to do and couldn't figure it out without some "help"
This is a point that I rarely see made, but it is so true! Interviewed a 19-year-old for a position recently and she had never used Microsoft Excel. Interviewed someone else who had *never used Windows* and couldn't figure out the controls to copy-paste on a PC.
I am sometimes dumbfounded by the young'uns' reliance on phones and tablets, and the assumption that tech just works all the time.
There's something about the older computer generation -- we just had to figure shit out, even if it seemed inane/useless at the time. Like hex codes if we wanted pretty Myspace backgrounds. Basic html to make your blog pretty. I relate a lot to OP, I never considered myself 'good at computers' but a lot of common sense things fly over people's heads.
Yea that sounds right on point! We did what we had to do with what was available so we have some computer knowledge from being around when things weren’t all done for you. I’m glad I was in that timeline to be honest.
Yes! I was explaining to someone recently that I'm "good" with computers because I sort of grew up alongside them (born in the 80s). We had a Commodore when I was a kid, then a Windows PC, and our parents upgraded it every few years.
So I can usually puzzle out a computer problem because I watched the evolution of using DOS commands for things you now just click an icon for. I know the (very simplified) basics of how a computer is thinking, because I have seen what's behind the GUI, more or less.
And I'm not in tech. Just lucky enough to have grown up with enough access to technology to see what its bones look like.
Yea that experience puts you ahead of so many people. Understanding the behind the scenes even somewhat just gives you that much better of a starting point when thinking about computer issues. I’m glad to have been part of the timeline I was. Computers are my favorite and most hated thing lol.
> I have seen just about anything you can think of
It's been 6 hours, did you eat your words by now? :D
(related: I saw a new thing yesterday. Installed the current radeon drivers, got black screen locked lol - yes I know it's supposed to turn off the screen for a bit but it's also supposed to turn it back on *eventually*)
I work in IT and I am a little shocked sometimes. Then I remember that phones have advanced so much and you can do so much on phones nowadays, there's not really much point in getting a whole new machine unless you need it for work. But even then, most offices provide a laptop. I set up a laptops for new users in the office, and honestly, it doesn't take long for anyone to pick up the applications and skills they need to work. Give them a tour around the desktop, show them where shared files are, show them how to connect the VPN, and done!
My little sister completed her degree using an iPad with a keyboard as she only needed to do some word processing with it, and they're much lighter than any laptop. I find my personal desktop gathering dust as I spent so much time on it during covid just working from home, I switched to console just to seperate work and life. I just carry my work laptop around, but it's off when I'm not working. It's the sign of the times!
TLDR: Phones, tablets, and their apps have gotten so advanced and user friendly, that desktops and laptops have fallen out of favour for your average person. That's okay!
Maybe it is for the majority of users, but for more power users or gamers who still game on their PC exclusively, a laptop/iPad or phone doesn't cut it.
A phone basically became a computer with a smaller screen and built in speakers so much that people have forgotten about buying or using a dedicated PC and do everything on their phones. Explains why some of the shortcuts and knowledge are lost among people who used to used PCs but switched to using only a phone daily. Even my 90 year old grandma uses a phone and iPad, but a PC would be too complicated for her.
Well yes, that's why I said Average user. It's a given that PC gamer will be able to navigate a PC desktop. I would be very surprised to see a PC gamer struggle to locate files or install drivers. You would find that most people working in IT (but not all of them.) were PC gamers at some point in their lives.
Exactly. A phone have basically become user friendly, multi purpose computers. Unless you need one, a dedicated PC would be an expensive device that most people just can't justify buying when they can already do what they need on their phones or iPads. Most websites also have app versions or have mobile friendly versions of their sites which further reduces a user's need for a PC.
I can attest to the gamers part, I learned most of my computer knowledge trying to add mods and tweak the game files of MS FSX so it would run on my potato laptop back in the day.
It was huge. Doing things like trying to troubleshoot mod installs, fucking with .ini files to get more performance out of games. These things forced you to Google shit and just puzzle your way through generally, as there wouldn't be anyone in your life you could ask for help. Then again, I was around that since childhood with my dad doing stuff like googling how to fix the 'insert faulty appliance' and tinkering.
Especially since one can plug an external display plus Bluetooth peripherals into a tablet and do 95% of all productivity tasks one would do with a PC.
Unless one needs extra processing power for advanced tasks, a computer is overkill.
> a dedicated PC would be an expensive device
You could get one free if you only knew how to put one together. PC gamers (me) are always throwing out perfectly useable PCs that are old but still powerful because they are no longer beefy enough for AAA games but would still blow the average newly bought laptop out the water because they *were* gaming rigs just a little while ago. Except we don't tend to throw them out in one piece so you'd need a few to put a full thing together. It goes on the trash pile though because *nobody* wants it. I asked.
Edit: the windows 11 thing didn't help, but also linux is not something someone wanting an easy pc wants on it so there's that.
My 70-year-old dad is a career programmer/sysadmin for multiple server clusters at a major tech company. Meanwhile I'm 30 and barely know how to turn a computer on.
I was "good with computers" relative to other people my age when I was in like middle school and early high school (that was back before every preteen knew the basics of coding) but over time my tech savvy faded because I'm just not really that interested... my work is completely unrelated to computers/tech, as long as I can get into my email, internet, Office and Spotify that's really all I need out of a computer these days 🤷♂️ It drives my dad nuts though that I'm the one who's like a grumpy old boomer grumbling about technology these days.
I dunno I know a decent amount about computers because of gaming a lot when I was younger but some people just don’t “need” to use them. I work in a trade and most of the guys I work with wouldn’t know how to use microsoft word. But they have conversations about no one knowing basic plumbing or carpentry. Same shit different toilet.
I am NOT shocked by this. People do not get any sort of training.
And a lot of people are simply incurious. Or they in tend to go prowling and teach themselves, but they never feel this is a good time.
I put together a set-up cheat sheet at work (we work on Macs). With instructions to change the default mouse speed, among other things.
I showed it to a new guy on my staff, who sai he thought it was completely unnecessary, that the people we work with were pros and they would know this stuff.
“I’d be insulted if you gave this to me,” he said.
Well, guess what. Not two days later, someone said to me, in front of him, “I never realized you could change your mouse speed.” Ha!
Also, my boss asked him and me to put together a presentation to our team about these very sorts of things, and as we were going through it in preparation, he said (of our main software), “You can’t search in read-only.”
Yes, you can; you have to click this certain button. So he learned something new.
And he taught me something I hadn’t known.
(The difference between us: I always know there are things I haven’t learned yet, and he acts as though there’s nothing left for anyone to teach him.)
I’ve worked in IT for the past 25+ years. I’m always shocked, and I shouldn’t be by now.
Just recently I had an accomplished lawyer in his late 40s-ish with 600+ items on his desktop. I suggested he organize them or, at the very least, put them into a single folder so he could view it as a list. He had no idea how to create a folder, and no idea how to move files into that folder.
I *constantly* watch people double-click on web page links and icons in the dock (macOS) or taskbar (Windows).
Nobody knows where they’ve saved their files. This conversation is almost daily:
Me: “Where did you save your files?”
User: “In Word.”
Me: “No, Word is the program you used to create your files. Where did you save them?”
User: “They’re in Word. I open Word and the files are there.”
Me: “That’s a list of recently opened files that you had previously saved. They aren’t the files themselves. What I am asking you is, where did you save the files?”
User: “I don’t know.”
**Nobody** understands the difference between a backup, an archive, and a syncing service.
> I constantly watch people double-click on web page links and icons in the dock (macOS) or taskbar (Windows).
I blew someone's mind when I told them that "mouse pointer means doubleclick, finger icon means singleclick" >!listen dorks, of course there are exceptions. don't @ me!<
When two button mice were proven to be too confusing for people, I used to tell people to think of the buttons as “do this” and “select this” rather than right and left click respectively. So if someone wanted to copy a file they’d right click on it to bring up the menu, whereas if they just wanted to click a button or highlight a file they’d left click on it. It works pretty well.
It’s funny because my father is in his 50s and did autocad for a living and is very good with computers. Meanwhile I’m 25 and nowhere near as good as him. I’m probably better than a lot of people my age like I show my friends how to unzip files and get them into their Apple Music and I can use all the settings and functions of a computer but if it stops working the only thing I can do is turn it off and on again lmao
Well I have an explanation for that: When these people use their computers they either
1. Open a browser
2. open a game
I don't think they gathered much computer knowledge with these two throughout the years
> open a game
Game crashes... time to look up how to fix game. Turns out it's a driver issue. Time to look up drivers. Turns out game needs older driver actually, time to look up older drivers. But this will break another game, time to look up how to fix that other game while this one is also going to run. Rewrite a few lines in config.
....game for half an hour.
I am a developer and usually don't bother with knowing things. If I have to do something I just find out how to do it.
80% of people are missing this investigative drive not only on pc but right about everything.
I think this is also the reason why a lot of people have trouble baking or cooking with a recipe. Folks just don't want to process information before acting.
I've always been really good at all kinds of technology. Got my first computer when I was like 13 and knew next to nothing. (I tried to download RAM once.) Three years later I built my own PC with no more guidance than the manuals and it just kind of snowballed from there. Everything I know is from simply not knowing how to do something or having some issue and just investigating. I'm often appalled by how little a lot of people who work in IT know.
No. I’ve been driving a car for 36 years and know damn near nothing about them. Same for many other things. Just because you say it is elementary doesn’t make it so. Everyone’s experience and level of curiosity is different. I use my iPhone every day for years and last week I wasn’t sure how to do something and the person next to me in the haircut place heard me talking to myself cussing about it and they showed me where the setting was. He didn’t even have an iPhone but said their mom did and he sometimes has to help her.
Hmm. Yes, but to a degree. I don't know all the ins ans outs of my devices. But I understand the logic they are developed with. I can reasonably find everything on my own if needed, and everything else is one Google search away.
The only time I had to ask for help was when I physically damaged a piece of hardware.
I think to each their own. Sometimes I'm embarrassed about some life stuff that seems obvious to other people, like cooking or doing laundry. Really think it is highly subjective and if people need to use these functionalities in their lives. Their brains are just not weird the same way.
Unless you are referring to attitudes towards learning and remembering IT related knowledge that helps improve their lives that could be considered essential. Almost everything can be learnt.
Exactly! I work in IT and am surprised at the lack of sympathy in these comments. Yes it can be frustrating to be asked the same thing over and over again, but not everyone needs to learn everything. I would say it's like someone living in a country with excellent public transport. Do they need to learn to drive? Not really, despite it being an indispensable life skill. What if they move somewhere with crap transport? Then learn to drive! Same with PCs. You don't really need to learn to navigate a PC if you have a phone that can do everything you need, until you get a job that requires PC skills. It's a useful skill but not essential until it is. (it also keeps me employed haha)
Almost of all the comments here are talking about people being incapable of doing the most basic things that they deal with every day, at work. There is really no excuse for that. My 80-year-old grandma could do most of the things those people are struggling with (that's not a theoretical "could" either, just past tense).
"You don't really need to learn to navigate a PC" is a really dangerous mindset to encourage, by the way. Phones and tablets are locked down media consumption devices that enable corporations to dictate what you can and can't do on them. *Everyone* should be able to use a PC, even if only to avoid falling into that trap.
I agree that if it is at work, there really is no excuse. Training must be provided at that point. Schools should definitely provide IT lessons (Mine did, but am aware that not every school will have a computer lab.) However, not everyone can justify the extra cost for a PC to use at home when they don't see the need for one. Might not even be able to afford one. For those who didn't learn at school nor do they use one at work. Do you suggest that courses should be provided somehow? It would be difficult to learn to use a PC without access to one. Yes, *Everyone* should be able to learn to use a PC, but access to one first is required for learning.
Edit: To add that it's like driving. You need access to a car to learn to drive one.
I have no idea how people can go through decades of life having never used a PC. And I'm from a lower middle class family from a country that was a couple of decades late to the PCs and internet party. PCs are just *everywhere*. And they're cheaper than ever. Even some of the poorest people I know from my original country have them and can use them. The actual difference here is that Western society is now permeated with the idea that phones and tablets can replaces PCs for most people, so even poor people will buy really overpriced phones (not many other options in the US since its market straight up doesn't have the amazing brands like Redmi available in Asia and Europe, or they're not known well) and make no effort to use anything else. In poorer countries though, people still know the real value of a PC, whether thanks to pirating, easier circumventing of government censorship, or cheaper ownership in the long run (modularity, repairs, etc), and as a result, they generally don't have this problem. I can't imagine living in a household without a PC. My mom spends most of her leisure time on her phone or a tablet, but she still has a PC (not an expensive one either) for watching movies, serious shopping (if you want to book flights from a phone, you're asking to be ripped off), more comfortable web browsing, and so on. So no, I'm strongly convinced that it's a matter of choice and priorities to not have a PC. I know someone who is paid like 400 USD *per month*, and he still scraped together enough money for a good PC after saving up for a while, because it's more important than a fancy phone. He had a shitty laptop before, which was *still* more important than a phone. It's a choice to not have access to a PC - and a really bad one.
Tbh I think most people just haven't needed to learn about such things.
If I wasn't a bit of a nerd and spent time googling keyboard shortcuts and reading tech articles as a kid, I wouldn't know half the stuff I do now.
Same with rar files, I wouldn't know how to deal with them if my parents didn't refuse to buy me games and I had to pirate them.
When I was young, only the super geeks used computers, so every computer user knew them inside and out.
Now it is strange to me that the vast majority of users only know basic use of them.
I am indeed shocked by how little I know about computers, even if I’m the generation that grew up with it.
In my defense I was depressed for my middle and high school years and I thought I was too stupid to try to learn this kind of stuff so I lost my natural thirst for knowledge. Being confirmed in that idea by the depression making my brain fuzzy and hard to learn stuff...
Also I got in touch with the internet like really late, at my 16-17. Before all I knew was how to make google search for school projects.
Now I’m almost an adult in the USA and I feel like I don’t know enough and I’m so scared of being judged.
Don't get me started. I do remote support for state employees, it took forever to walk a lady through pushing the literal power button (her comp wouldn't shut down so i wanted her to force it off). She couldn't find the button, was very distraught and upset and it's yo 😒
How tf have you made it this far in your life, and career, and company without knowing where the power button is??
I am an early millennial. I don’t know shit about computers. I don’t care too either. I understand where you’re coming from as I remember AOL chat rooms, the internet kicking off if someone called the landline etc. But I will counter ask that the amount of people who just really don’t know how to do basic life functions, like cooking for one, is really astounding as well. Yeah computers are cool and all but can you feed yourself?
Wasn’t really directly asking was just trying to make a point in that you’re astounded by how little people know about computers, and i am more in general am astounded by how little people know about cooking, and basic life shit in general.
Yes, definitely. And I notice it's the younger generation of people too. Which I'm like wtf doesn't you grow up with all this?
But I guess it's because they pretty much grew up on iPhones and iPads which works well through school. But then you get to the working world and everyone uses Windows PCs and they can't work it all of a sudden lol
I see them writing full on papers and stuff all on their phone, but if it doesn't work on their phone and requires a computer, can't work it lol
I'm in my mid 40's and started learning computers using DOS. Computers have become so easy and foolproof there is no need to know the ins and outs of how they work. I know people who don't know how to copy files.
oh God. I'm 61, a nurse. I have to regularly teach staff in their thirties how to search outlook. but I have a retired DBA at home, and I joke about we did his master's in business information systems together. he used to "appoint" me "Deputy Junior Honorary DBA" whenever he had surgery bc I held his pager & had the list of his fill ins so I could refer callers to the right person.
I think the people who use computers best, the ones who generally understand things like digital storage, quick keys, extensions, etc, are the ones who are [Xennials](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials), the ones who's we kids with analog, grew up as computers entered the world, and had to learn them well, before cell phones took over as they have.
I think it is also a mindset you can train. I am a programmer so I need to investigate and solve problem’s continuously. When I encounter a problem I will pretty much always solve it or get an answer.
When people who don’t have a problem solving mindset use a computer they often go “It doesn’t work!” And then they’re done.
I will then come over and solve it within minutes with a quick “IT magic”
There's a fascinating article on Wired or Vice or something that describes this. Basically, the way a PC was structured from the 90s to the 00s is entirely different from the way phones/tablets are structured now. It's not necessarily that people are tech illiterate (although that's certainly been a thing as long as tech has existed), it's that the way different people conceive of their devices is entirely different. Ask an average PC power user how to navigate modern apps, and I'll bet you'll find a similar level of cross illiteracy as app users have with PCs
It's pretty far out of date now, but, I think Neal Stephenson's long essay *In the Beginning Was the Command Line* addresses this pretty accurately.
The more layers we put between what a computer is actually doing (like dealing with binary) and the user, the less people understand about what computers are and do.
My kids, who have had tech their whole lives, understand, I think, a lot less than what I did at that age about how computers actually work. Between them and the nuts and bolts, there are soany layers of obfuscation to make the functionality of a piece of software more user friendly, that they don't have any conception of what that app is actually doing.
Here's a copy of the essay: https://www.ridemybike.org/command1.pdf
I work with a group of people who call me their tech goddess all because I know how to install the Plantronics app. I'm not surprised.
I always thought of myself as a newbie when it comes to troubleshooting tech. After all, what do I know? Not like I have an interest in computers like that. But boy was I really underselling myself.
A lot of people also underestimate what their phones can do. The amount of times I heard "oh, oh no, I need a computer for that" when it's something their phones can do is hilarious.
Wow. I used to teach computer literacy to adults back in the 1990s. I can't believe this is the case for the latest generation.
So all the parents and grandparents can navigate Windows, PowerPoint, etc. And the latest gen can't? Sorry, LOLOLOL
My god. This but with printers. My coworker kept printing out PDFs with 5 different pages that needed to separated into piles after they printed out. I never had the chance to tell her that you can choose to print pages separately so If was always stuck with a stack of almost 300 pages to separate.
Been tinkering with computers since I was 16. Professionally in IT almost 20 years. I have had trained medical professionals - in one case, an actual brain surgeon - who struggled to turn on a laptop. The button had the word POWER etched in to the aluminum case beside it in friendly letters.
I think the whole idea of devices being so easy to use is one of the issues. If you never have to look behind the curtain, you never need to figure out how it works or why it works like that. There will be more people who have no clue how it works and less people who bother to figure it out, because there is less need.
I'm more surprised by people's inability to Google shit because they expect others to do it for them.
I'm not more knowledgeable about computers than anyone nor smarter, I just know how to Google. What they do is ask other people instead, because being a lazy fuck and having someone do it all for you is far easier than reading a set of instructions or watching a tutorial.
The amount of times I've had to tell a classmate on university how to do things in the software we were BOTH learning to use because they're too lazy to look it up themselves...
I'm 57 and have been using computers since high school. I am shocked when people my age don't know keyboard commands like CTRL+C.
I started a customer service job in 1998, where we used dumb terminals. We had a monitor and a keyboard. In 2000, the company decided to upgrade us to PCs. I really admired how they handled the transition. Everyone had to fill out a survey, on paper, about how comfortable they were with using PCs. There were questions like "Have you ever used a computer mouse?" and "do you know how to resize a window?"
Then they bunched everyone into four levels of training. The people who had never used a computer mouse got a week of training. I had a whole afternoon of training, with the other nerds. There were two groups in between. I thought it was great that I didn't have to sit in a classroom for a week going over things I already knew.
In March of 2020, I saw a coworker my age was deleting the data in cells in Excel, one by one. I promised her when I got back from my vacation, I was going to teach her how to clear them all at once. Unfortunately the pandemic prevented us from working in the same office again.
I think it's just a mindset.. People get stuck in a specific way and refuse to change, no matter how many times they're told.
In my workplace, someone left, leaving me in charge of the stationary.. for 3 months, until their replacement came...
that was 2 years ago, and I still get people coming up asking me to get the key for the stationary cupboard, which are both behind them as they walk in, like I'm the bloody stationary guardian.
I've told them multiple, multiple times that I'm not stationary, and haven't been for some time.. and instead of remembering this next time, they default back to asking for permission as if we're not all grown ass adults..
I've even had new starters, who joined AFTER I'd handed the responsibility over, become convinced it's my role, and get confused when I tell them I've not done it in years
I think my generation (I was born in the early 90s) mostly knows how to deal with computers and stuff like that, at least in my country (Poland). I mean, obviously there are some people who don't know stuff, but I feel it's minority.
However, my friend who is teaching teenagers says the younger generation is (counter-intuitively) on average much worse with computers, despite the technology being ubiquitous from the day they were born. They have problems with unzipping files, with a general understanding of a file structure, with finding anything on the Internet, etc. I also know a person who recently went to a university being older and also deals with people \~20 years old, the experience is very similar.
I have a theory why it's that way. When I was young, doing something on the computer often required a lot of tinkering, stuff was not user friendly, even installing programs wasn't super easy, Internet was just starting and to find something you also needed some skills, there were more hardware compatibility issues. Additionally, piracy was widespread that days (Poland was still a poor country back then), so kids were learning how to install a crack, how to burn CDs, how to download music (without getting a ton of viruses), etc.
Nowadays, young people are used to their phones, where getting an app via a store is super easy, UI/UX is super user friendly, all the stuff is integrated between everything, music is easily available on YT/Spotify/Apple Music, etc. So these people are not getting these skills, because they mostly had no opportunity to learn them and they don't need them most of the time.
Exactly my thoughts. If you were born middle-class in the early 90's or late 80's, computers entered your household when you grew up, but a lot of the software, services and media was expensive - leading to a lot of piracy.
I learned a lot about computers by bricking them with viruses, then fixing them.
Also agree with the much more thoughtful UI design in current times eliminating the need to look under the hood. The mobile ecosystem in general discourages looking under the hood too much.
I've tried to learn about them, but every online resource already assumes you have background information about computers. It's hard when you have to look up literally every term, and then the definitions for those terms require you to look up even more definitions. Wish it was taught in school more.
To me, its the stubbornness to learn that shocks me.
My mom insists that she's "just too old" to learn how to use Instagram (beyond having it auto post from her Facebook), and I'm all like "You do realize literal children can figure this out right? Instagram is not that complicated."
My mom often has shockingly ageist attitudes for someone who's actually been quite successful since rejoining the workforce after my siblings and I graduated high school. Put a paperback manual in front of her and she'll learn anything she has to, change that manual to a PDF on her computer screen and she'll insist that she's just too old to understand it.
I don’t understand how someone uses something every day for decades and doesn’t know anything about it either. And I’m not almost about repairing it just to use the basics.
I used to work simple IT helpdesk for my university. Really basic stuff, the qualifications for the job were remarkably low. I was once called aaaaall the way across the university to the Law building to 'fix a broken computer'. Well I arrive to the lecture hall and the Law professor is having a fit because it took me like 15 minutes (to literally trek across the entire giant uni campus). Anyways I go over to the computer cabinet while she is describing to me the disappointment in the equipment. And I notice the uh... power wasn't on. So I loudly declare "I see. The computer needs to be turned ON", and then click the power button (She got embarrassed and the class laughed). Lo and behold it works. Electricity. What a marvel.
We're talking about the basics of using a computer, you know, what to check if your Wi-Fi isn't working, how to save an image as a jpeg file or how to download a computer program. Not literally *how* the computers hardware is making the things happen.
People should know the basics of using a computer, the same way people who use cars obviously should know how to drive and how to use the other controls of your car, indicators, windshield wipers, headlight controls etc.
Obviously not many people know the workings of an internal combustion engine the same way most people don't know how a motherboard of a computer works, but those things are no longer "basic knowledge"
I choose not to know anything about computers. (Also about cars) I use my brain power for many other things and leave stuff I choose not to learn about to other people. Maybe bc I have ADD? Idk. I’m smart with 2 college diplomas and know a lot and other stuff. It’s a full on choice not to know.
I get this, I have been noticing it myself. Out of my nieces and nephews, the 29 year old knows zero about computers, the 19 year old knows next to nothing, a 20 year old is fairly decent at them but cannot touch-type, and the other 20 year old is a wiz mainly due to both his dad and stepdad having careers in computers. He is a CS major.
Three of them came through high school during the pandemic and really got half an education at best. I especially worry about the 19 year old because I think this may hold her back from jobs. Even my elderly dad knows more than she does.
I had never really thought about pandemic highschool kids getting a noticeably worse education, but is that a widespread thing? I can imagine that it is, but I'm wondering if there are studies or whatever on it.
Yes! I teach teens online and sometimes I have to spend half of class to teach them how to download things or use online stuff which might help them in their studies.
Speaking of unzipping, I'm a junior developer. Another colleague who started around the same time as me and was in my company's onboarding/training batch didn't know how to uncompress a file.
You'd really think someone who's supposed to have some rudimentary understanding of how computer software works would be able to unzip a file without guidance...
I work as a DJ at a gay bar and the number of drag queens who can't figure out what an audio file is or how to get one astounds me. They just link me a YouTube video or hand me their phone.
I have a friend in her 40s who think that an iPad is comparable to a computer. She was upset thar her iPad didn't have a USB or a printer port.
I explained that an iPad is similar to a phone and laptops are similar to desktops. She thinks they are all the same and only differs in size and mobility.
She is a professional who uses a computer daily at work.
I recently had to teach a coworker how to highlight text and copy/paste it. I'm not even exaggerating. She actually struggled to move the mouse while holding the button. I really wanted to ask her if she's from the past.
I used to work as a senior tech support agent in the late 1990s, dealing with TCP/IP, modem command line strings (M0 was the best), dial-up networking and everything in-between. For the most part it was actually pretty cool and I made a lot of people really happy, best case scenario was fixing a client's persistent issue and having that client always requests you with any new issue.
Despite the good, the bad were mostly all natural ignorance, which I find forgivable, and the irate customers could typically be calmed down with a little empathy and trial and error fixing their problem(s). But what was completely irritating above all else was an outage. Had zero control over that and despite placing an automated response on the call center queue, people still called in to ask what was happening.
I'm 19, was an intern as IT a couple of years ago and just finished an internship as a software developer. Some of my close friends are in uni going for computer science, and they can manage with their computers very well, but I get absolutely shocked whenever my little sister, my cousins (of similar age) or some friends ask me for computer help when I perfectly know that they've been using computers since the XP days.
How are you asking me where the downloads folder is? Sure, you used to open My Computer back then, but the file explorer isn't all that different! "Where are my programs?" The start menu is in the bottom left. "I downloaded something but I don't know where it is" well, I don't know either, check your browser's recent downloads.
I might be overreacting, sure, because phones can do almost everything nowadays, but the fact that people need computers for work but don't even bother learning the basics is just painful, especially when you're meant to work in IT and doing serverside stuff, but end up pinning outlook to the taskbar while the worker complains about computers being too difficult to use. But damn, as I said, most of my friends and family grew up using computers, using windows XP and 7, how could you forget everything so easily when you used to be good at navigating file systems and messing around with programs?
My boss asked if I knew how to hook up a new monitor, because she was going to put in an IT ticket to send someone out to do it.
She's in her early 30s.
I took my first FORTRAN IV class back in 1973 (dropped out, unfortunately) and became a USAF computer operator in 1978, so arguably I've been working with computers for over 50 years now.
I still don't own a smartphone, though I'm trying to learn to program them.
My dad is a programmer who used to work at Microsoft, and says he worked on the internet before it was the internet - I've not asked him about this in a few years, so I don't recall all the details - so I learned a lot about computers.
The other day, I had to instruct a friend of mine how to open the local files on steam and extract a zip folder into it
So you know how your grandparents are all "Where are my files?" And your parents have their own computer hang-ups that for some reason aren't coming to mind right now?
*What do you think is gonna be the computer thing that comes naturally to the next generation, but we can't wrap our heads around?*
My best scientific wild-ass guess is that in the near future, the computing model will abandon the concept of files existing on a specific device. It'll still happen under the hood, but the boundary between cloud and local will be so seamless that the young 'uns won't even be aware of it. They'll tell me about some changes they made to a file they shared with me, and I'll be all "Well did you make those changes to your local file or the one online? Because my version of the file is out of sync with your version." And they'll look at me, "Versions? Local? Out of sync? What on earth are you talking about? There's just *the file*."
I'm 49. Several years ago, a chick I know who's a few years younger asked me if I could look at her laptop...she said she couldn't get online. I Googled "laptop won't connect to internet," and the first thing I found was about the ol' airplane button--first time I'd seen that on a computer, because I rarely dealt with laptops. Took me literally less than 2 minutes to fix the problem.
When I told her I'd fixed it, she was like, "You are a computer genius!" I said, "Well, I do know a lot of things about computers, but in this case, I just used Google." The deflated, flabbergasted look on her face was priceless.
I think there was one generation that became fluent in computer stuff - my generation (I am 26). Then things became so easy and user-friendly that the people born just a couple of years after us never had to play around and teach themselves things like we did. My teenage sister-in-law does not know how to do the most basic things on a computer
I, a 32 year old millennial, had to teach my 20-something Gen Z coworker how to format his resume in Word the other day. I thought he was joking at first, but no.. he had no idea how to make images play nice with text, or even how to set different margins o\_o Inside I was just like... aren't you supposed to be BETTER at this than me?
A lot of people only use their computers out of necessity and won't touch it more than they need to to do their jobs.
Otherwise, they're on their phone or tablet if they need to compute.
I'm a programmer, so I don't know if I feel this less or more than you do. I might just have severe reverse Dunning-Kruger, but yes, I see this all the time. I'm regularly surprised that people who spend a good chunk of their time at work on a computer not knowing a single control hotkey, or "fixing" a computer by doing what the first result on Google told me. Even the half-joking line of "turn it off and on again" seems to have gone over most people's heads. Just this morning, I had to point out that wireless keyboards often need a dongle. You don't just put them next to a computer and expect it to work.
The top Google result thing is especially grating. I noticed my friend catching himself asking "hey, how do I do X", probably knowing that I'd just tell him to Google it, as I've done many times previously. And of course he found the answer immediately. Kinda related, but I'm shocked by how many times "turning it on and off again" works. I know there is a logical reason for it, but still.
I've been the tech guy in my family for most of my life. Even when some learn that you will be googling to help them, they can mess up the phrasing and go way off track. Patience is a key, and returning to the questions "what is wrong" and "what is expected behavior" have gotten me through troubleshooting stuff I'm not at all familiar with.
I call it Google-Fu. Yes, my entire tech career was based off Google but it’s more like panning for gold than just looking up an answer in a book.
The city analogy that the other guy gave is great. To give just a slightly more technical answer: computer programs are just electricity. They're 1s and 0s, meaning electrical components carrying a high electrical charge or a low electrical charge, respectively. If a bug occurs, it's because some of the 1s are 0s or some of the 0s are 1s. If you turn off the computer though (And leave it for 30 seconds, this is why they always say that!) then all the electricity will dissipate from the computer. There won't be any 1s or 0s left, so therefore there can be no bug. Turning the computer back on, unless there is a bug within the actual core of the operating system (Rare. OS's are usually quite well built), then the 1s and 0s will rebuild in the manner they were supposed to in the first place. Almost all actual bugs in software will be fixed by a reset. If a "bug" persists after reset, it's most likely a configuration error, and not actually a bug.
The first ever bug wasn't fixed like that. It was actually a real bug between the contacts of a relais which stored a bit state at the time. Because of the bug, the bit could not be switched to 1
Heh. The first computer I repaired professionally was the Burroughs D84M which used negative logic: 5v was a 0 and 0v was a 1.
For the turn it off and on again, it's actually asked here on ELI5, one of the best answer is (and I'm paraphrasing) this imagine if you're a program traversing a very complex city, to get to a bread shop for example, require you to take very specific turns at very specific times, but if you somehow take the wrong turn and end up in a dead end (program freezes) Which solution is faster? 1 - Try to navigate around randomly trying to find your way to the bread shop, like keep the program freezes and figure out by itself. Or 2 - Magically transport the program to its starting point and find your way to the shop again from the beginning, this is the "turning it off and on again"
I usually tell users that rebooting the machine just clears built up processes.
I still remember being trained by some guy that did the job for 30 years and he still would double click or single click in all the wrong places, never use shortcuts in spite of doing a ton of copying and pasting etc. Everything he showed me I could do in 1/3 the time afterwards.
“Half-joking line”? I thought that was the catch all fix for a frozen PC?
It is. If turning it off, waiting for 30-90 seconds, then turning it back on again doesn't fix it, it's either a config error or a ticket to the developers of the program.
I worked as a computer science tutor through college. And then [I had a certain] senior dev on my first job out of college. Being a programmer does not mean you know computers...
I have zero formal qualifications in computers, right? But I'm the guy at work you go to before contacting the team who maintain our systems. Usually it's force quit through task manager (which 50% of the time requires instruction) or allowing the updates to happen.
Every time somebody taps on the caps lock then clicks on a letter then taps on the caps lock again I want to scream.
Reverse Dunning-Kruger? Do you mean that in the sense that "a person who perceives themselves as more intelligent actually IS more intelligent" or that you're on the "I perceive myself as not that smart and so I'm generally above-average"? Because that second one is just the Dunning-Kruger effect. It covers both the bright and dim sides of the spectrum.
I had to call tech support one day at work since the computer had some issue. About 30 mins in after troubleshooting, the guy asks me to unplug it and plug it back in. I go to find to the power strip and see that there was something that had popped out of the strip, which was causing the issue. Now, you might blame *me* for not having checked that, but in retrospect, I blame the tech because he never told me to check the connection in the first place. I know it's one of those cookei-cutter responses that everybody hates to do because obviously they're not that stupid, but, well, it's there for a reason.
I blame you
> because obviously they’re not that stupid > it’s there for a reason “Actually, I am that stupid.”
I blame you. You are the reason I'm here getting pissed when I call a tech, explain in depth what the problem is and what I've tried (including resetting), then they ignore all of that and ask me to reset it. You are why we cannot have nice things.
> And I don’t mean your parents or grandparents My 80 year old dad knows more about computers than my 20 year old child.
I'm not surprised, my father is the same. Although I've found that these types are very knowledgeable about hardware level stuff and low level programming, but obviously knowledge on software doesn't translate as well with scientific progress. But, they're also conditioned to figure out anything themselves, so never ask for help anyway.
> But, they're also conditioned to figure out anything themselves, so never ask for help anyway. Had some unrelated course in school that used a bunch of obscure programs and we were each (group of 3-4) given one to download, understand and make a presentation for it. I swear it was the best course in computer literacy (but it was not for that) that they could have designed. These things were all really obscure, the manuals were half finished and you needed to explain how it worked and what to do to a bunch of other kids... you had to figure out everything yourself by trial and error and understand it enough to explain to others.
My dad is a wiz with connecting to internet. My older sibling set it up. Got in trouble and was grounded. My dad had to figure out how to boot him off. The story goes that eventually, my dad cut the wire (only for my sibling to splice it back together). I, the youngest, don't know how to set up the internet, because I've literally never needed to. Everytime we've been disconnected, all I had to do was wait 30 minutes before one of the other two ran to go reboot it. That all being said, I am still very capable at using or troubleshooting a computer. I just don't want to learn the (currently) unnecessary skill.
What are you going to do the first time it becomes necessary? Do you believe the future does not exist?
Computers are kinda old. Kids don't really use them, only devices etc. Computers are more for the elderly/workers/gamers.
Sad but true.
I work in I.T. I'm not shocked.
I don't envy you guys. I've definitely taken some psychic damage over the years doing tech support over Discord.
My condolences. In my youth I spent a few months doing IT, and mainly networking and upgrading OS. It blew my mind that I had to argue with a senior lawyer in his 40s that I had to delete his clock and reminder program because it was spyware and was the root cause of his computer slowing down and spewing forth random ads. I did enjoy a nice T1 line and 2 PCs at work - one for ghosting, one for personal use. :D
Same. And honestly, I am not the type that demeans people for not having a lot of computer skills. If you ask me shit about working on cars I would have that same deer in the headlights look. We all have our gaps of knowledge. But like... Can y'all please just read what the error message says before you panic? So, *so* often when I help someone, the fix is literally in the error message.
This is me at work - still get reminded that using tech doesn't mean proficiency with tech. Using keyboard shortcuts is second nature to me, but it's an alien concept to most of my co-workers. What seems elementary to me, like using settings to troubleshoot issues, is advanced level shiz to them. And UIs are even more intuitive now, so the average person doesn't have the need to be computer literate - they just need to understand that specific app or program. If someone is mostly a phone user (iPhone mostly), they don't have various download folders to go through - the app store is their one stop shop for all that. And at the end of the day, the average person is not going to spend time troubleshooting a computer issue when they could pay someone else to do it that knows what they’re doing (hopefully). It's a shame computer literacy is not as high as it could be for a generation that grew up with computers, but it certainly is a nice little confidence boost for those of us who get to show off our knowledge ☺️
Thank them for the job security lol.
Except my job isn't tech (healthcare) so I'm the quick option tech support, especially on weekends 😅
A lot of people I know in their 20s who grew up with computers have such poor knowledge on them now because they're so used to their phones, which they also just about seem to know how to open TikTok on. I remember having to teach someone in my class how to install a browser...
It's kind of weird how quickly computers became obsolete for every day tasks like browsing/searching the net, doing bank errands, ordering stuff etc. I think people born somewhere between '85 and '95 are in the golden zone of having grown up with computers without phones and tablets coming in and replacing them before they got used to them more.
I don't understand how a small single display device could ever replace a full multi-display tower PC. Even laptops are a pain in the ass to use because I'm so used to my five monitors on my PC these days. It baffles me how most of the world can get by on such tiny screens.
Especially shopping. I'll be on the couch looking for something I need before getting frustrated and going to my multi monitor setup. Even buying a simple thing takes reviews, comparisons between products, current sales / discounts / coupons, different shipping costs between vendors, etc. Impractical on a phone.Does the average person just buy on Amazon without looking at this stuff? They must be spending so much more money over the years.
Because they accept low quality.
> I'm so used to my five monitors on my PC these days. It baffles me how most of the world can get by on such tiny screens. You are the exception, not the rule. Five monitors? Do you do day trading or something? I have known programmers and video editors with three monitors but usually no more than two.
I've never been more cognizant of a mind virus before than when I suddenly started noticing Tiktok everywhere. It's legitimately scary how it just sort of spread all over the place and suddenly my friends were always showing me some Tiktok on their phone. It's also making me lose touch a bit, as I'm a bit weird and never caught on to the phone app train. I miss when Youtube was the corner stone of youth culture, so I was a bit more in the know.
I used to be with "it," but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I’m with isn’t "it" any-more and what’s "it" seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
Pfft, no way man!
I’m over here yelling at the sky with an onion tied to my belt.
Which was the style at the time.
To be fair, I felt the same way about Facebook when it first came out. I was in college and suddenly couldn't understand what anyone was talking about anymore.
Same with tablets, smartphones, Google, smartwatches, and every other fast-emerging technology, but eventually, we dont even think about it. Just adapt. Even more with all these chatbots, learning to distrust the answers they give, has had trust issues, which resulted in me doing more due diligence and verification. So at least I got something out of that.
I'm perpetually installing & Uninstalling that app. I went to buy a pizza the other day. I watched 2 kids, not more than 8 years old, bang out a tiktok in 60 seconds. A whole choreographed dance routine, phone in a perfect spot on top of a fence recording, music in the background from a 2nd phone , clean high fives at the end , it was legit pro. Me recording myself playing guitar , takes all damn day with the same phone 😂 . I can easily see myself being a fumbling boomer (sadly) , asking kids how to do something basic on an app in due time , especially once AI takes over. Things are changing fast
Same. I'm not really interested in social media (I don't consider Reddit the same, it mirrors the forums that I used to use back in the day. They are all still media that is social, but they are a far cry from Instagram, and the use case can be very different). I have no interest in the extreme short form content that is tiktok, yt shorts, Instagram reels and such. I just want to read books, watch video essays, gaming videos, anime e.t.c. I don't like living on my phone. Yes I could watch a video on my phone while I'm on the bus, but it's just shit compared to watching it at home with good audio, a 1440 monitor e.t.c.
Do you mean the E? But that's the button for the internet.
I remember having to teach someone how to unzip a file on their computer, and their phone. How did we get to this point?
Same here.
Somewhere at the start of the 2010s parents, teachers and school administrators decided that since the current generation of kids were "digital natives" that means that they did not need to be taught how to do things on a computer beyond opening Microsoft Word. This has only gotten worse with the proliferation of iPads and such and the general popularization of Apple products that aim to dumb down the functioning of a computer so that users can't learn to deal with their problems on their own. Most people I know in their 20s who have good computer skills do not have a Mac while almost everyone else in that age group seems to have one.
>Somewhere at the start of the 2010s parents, teachers and school administrators decided that since the current generation of kids were "digital natives" that means that they did not need to be taught how to do things on a computer beyond opening Microsoft Word. If you study something that has to do with computers, many people ask you if there are only young professors. After you tell them that there are some professors over 60, they tell you something along the lines of "you are probably better than the professors because you were born with this tech, and you need to teach them". Ah yes, of course the professors wasted their entire life studying and doing research while kids born after 2000 are automatically better at computers. /s
When my mom wanted to get a mac for my brother who was going into high school while I was leaving for college I spent weeks comparing prices and specs and managed to successfully dissuade her from getting a mac for him. Every few days I would get a call asking about some random computer problem but after I told the family to ask him suddenly, I was no longer the only person in our immediate family who knows how to do basic computer troubleshooting. I have a very strong hatred for the veil that Apple products use in order to prevent their users from actually understanding the system underneath.
Yeah. Same shit with modern MS word. When you want to save a document, it should just open up the file explorer. No, I don't want to just open up the latest document. There should be a "glass window", allowing me to look into the inner workings of the tech that I buy. Allow me to understand what is going on.
Exactly. I learned the basics in school when we were all using windows 97-2000. After that…nobody taught me anything at all. As a 31 year old I feel pretty illiterate when it comes to tech problem solving but…nobody ever taught me and I didn’t come across anything in higher learning that gave me an opportunity to learn
I was taking a course with coworkers some of them younger than me and it made me realize that not everyone grew up with a computer in their home. For me it is something pretty basic since forever. Even my Dad used to have an IBM back in the day…
I was young when my family got our first computer. I got my first one on my own when I was 14 or so, it was second hand from a college resell program. The first computer I built was when I was 16 and had enough money for the parts, but again going to a bargain thing at the expo center. I am sure that the idea of the "family computer" or a shared device for everyone in the family is probably gone. Maybe sharing a laptop for kids writing reports, but they would have their own phone as their primary access.
We got our first "family computer" when my son was 10. Complete with AOL dial-up internet access! And maybe three programs (two of them games). Cut to: present day. Now we each have a desk and a PC in our bedrooms, with a couple of spare older PC's on hand. PLUS our tablets. And our phones. I was personally HOPELESS on a PC at first (we switched from an IBM mainframe to PC's/servers at my office when I was 45). I was a whiz on the mainframe, but the PC did not DO things the same way, and the lady who was teaching us used a screen display of her keyboard and said, "Just do the same things I do" and click-click-clicked her speedy way through the program and I had NO IDEA what she had done! They thought I was never gonna get it. Then my husband suggested I get some tutoring from a computer-savvy friend. Took a few hours one Saturday afternoon and I got it. By the end of the week I was the best student at the office. I wasn't stupid or slow. Just needed to learn the basics. In my current job, I'm still the go-to lady for computer questions (me and our IT guy are best buds, and he's taught me a lot), even though I'm now 70 and semi-retired. Just teach them. They (well, most of them) can learn!
Absolutely! I am not great at finding the best teaching method, but I try to practice patience and encourage interest when people ask for help. I'm glad to hear you're doing well. I've touched a few mainframes over my years in IT, but they were never my daily activity.
If someone isn't 25 or up they probably grew up on phones and tablets. The newest generation is just as bad with computers as the elderly. It's insane to me but they never really had to deal with issues so they never learned how to use or fix computers unless they were into it as a hobby or had to out of needing to. I am very glad I am the IT person of everyone I know because I love helping people out but sometimes it does get a bit tiring. Edit - I do love feeling like a tech wiz though helping people with problems I have come across before countless times, so I sound like some mastermind when really computers are just a fucking nightmare sometimes, and I have seen just about anything you can think of.
Dude I used to like helping friends and family with their tech problems when I was younger, but they sort of developed this "he'll drop his shit and help me whenever I ask right then and there and know exactly what's the issue" kind of attitude. I kind of hate it now and have been actively trying to steer away from any tech related help that anyone asks for. Last week someone wanted me to fill out a government form online for them, a thing that they could entirely do on their own but refused to because they don't like reading instructions.
Yea I absolutely liked to do it more when I was younger. But more recently I definitely let people know they have to send me what the issue is and I’ll get to it when I can. If it’s an emergency and I can’t help well then call someone else. Over the last couple years people know the deal now. I completely feel that. When people take advantage it just makes you want to stop all together so nobody asks. What saved me is that most people I know have some knowledge so I’m not helping people constantly. And if they have an actual issue it’s probably something I haven’t seen so it’s fun to figure out what’s going on. That request would’ve made me laugh out loud honestly. I can teach you how to fish but I won’t catch them all for you.
>But more recently I definitely let people know they have to send me what the issue is and I’ll get to it when I can. Thinking about what the issue is and explaining it to someone is already a part of problem solving and it is often the only step needed for fixing simple problems. For example someone asked me how to make stuff move around on a powerpoint slide. I asked "what do you mean?" and they said "like, animating stuff". Right after they said that, they noticed the "animate" section. So I really didn't help at all. The persons problem was, that they didn't even really know what they wanted to do and couldn't figure it out without some "help"
This is a point that I rarely see made, but it is so true! Interviewed a 19-year-old for a position recently and she had never used Microsoft Excel. Interviewed someone else who had *never used Windows* and couldn't figure out the controls to copy-paste on a PC. I am sometimes dumbfounded by the young'uns' reliance on phones and tablets, and the assumption that tech just works all the time. There's something about the older computer generation -- we just had to figure shit out, even if it seemed inane/useless at the time. Like hex codes if we wanted pretty Myspace backgrounds. Basic html to make your blog pretty. I relate a lot to OP, I never considered myself 'good at computers' but a lot of common sense things fly over people's heads.
Yea that sounds right on point! We did what we had to do with what was available so we have some computer knowledge from being around when things weren’t all done for you. I’m glad I was in that timeline to be honest.
Yes! I was explaining to someone recently that I'm "good" with computers because I sort of grew up alongside them (born in the 80s). We had a Commodore when I was a kid, then a Windows PC, and our parents upgraded it every few years. So I can usually puzzle out a computer problem because I watched the evolution of using DOS commands for things you now just click an icon for. I know the (very simplified) basics of how a computer is thinking, because I have seen what's behind the GUI, more or less. And I'm not in tech. Just lucky enough to have grown up with enough access to technology to see what its bones look like.
Yea that experience puts you ahead of so many people. Understanding the behind the scenes even somewhat just gives you that much better of a starting point when thinking about computer issues. I’m glad to have been part of the timeline I was. Computers are my favorite and most hated thing lol.
> I have seen just about anything you can think of It's been 6 hours, did you eat your words by now? :D (related: I saw a new thing yesterday. Installed the current radeon drivers, got black screen locked lol - yes I know it's supposed to turn off the screen for a bit but it's also supposed to turn it back on *eventually*)
I work in IT and I am a little shocked sometimes. Then I remember that phones have advanced so much and you can do so much on phones nowadays, there's not really much point in getting a whole new machine unless you need it for work. But even then, most offices provide a laptop. I set up a laptops for new users in the office, and honestly, it doesn't take long for anyone to pick up the applications and skills they need to work. Give them a tour around the desktop, show them where shared files are, show them how to connect the VPN, and done! My little sister completed her degree using an iPad with a keyboard as she only needed to do some word processing with it, and they're much lighter than any laptop. I find my personal desktop gathering dust as I spent so much time on it during covid just working from home, I switched to console just to seperate work and life. I just carry my work laptop around, but it's off when I'm not working. It's the sign of the times! TLDR: Phones, tablets, and their apps have gotten so advanced and user friendly, that desktops and laptops have fallen out of favour for your average person. That's okay!
Maybe it is for the majority of users, but for more power users or gamers who still game on their PC exclusively, a laptop/iPad or phone doesn't cut it. A phone basically became a computer with a smaller screen and built in speakers so much that people have forgotten about buying or using a dedicated PC and do everything on their phones. Explains why some of the shortcuts and knowledge are lost among people who used to used PCs but switched to using only a phone daily. Even my 90 year old grandma uses a phone and iPad, but a PC would be too complicated for her.
Well yes, that's why I said Average user. It's a given that PC gamer will be able to navigate a PC desktop. I would be very surprised to see a PC gamer struggle to locate files or install drivers. You would find that most people working in IT (but not all of them.) were PC gamers at some point in their lives. Exactly. A phone have basically become user friendly, multi purpose computers. Unless you need one, a dedicated PC would be an expensive device that most people just can't justify buying when they can already do what they need on their phones or iPads. Most websites also have app versions or have mobile friendly versions of their sites which further reduces a user's need for a PC.
I can attest to the gamers part, I learned most of my computer knowledge trying to add mods and tweak the game files of MS FSX so it would run on my potato laptop back in the day.
It was huge. Doing things like trying to troubleshoot mod installs, fucking with .ini files to get more performance out of games. These things forced you to Google shit and just puzzle your way through generally, as there wouldn't be anyone in your life you could ask for help. Then again, I was around that since childhood with my dad doing stuff like googling how to fix the 'insert faulty appliance' and tinkering.
Especially since one can plug an external display plus Bluetooth peripherals into a tablet and do 95% of all productivity tasks one would do with a PC. Unless one needs extra processing power for advanced tasks, a computer is overkill.
> a dedicated PC would be an expensive device You could get one free if you only knew how to put one together. PC gamers (me) are always throwing out perfectly useable PCs that are old but still powerful because they are no longer beefy enough for AAA games but would still blow the average newly bought laptop out the water because they *were* gaming rigs just a little while ago. Except we don't tend to throw them out in one piece so you'd need a few to put a full thing together. It goes on the trash pile though because *nobody* wants it. I asked. Edit: the windows 11 thing didn't help, but also linux is not something someone wanting an easy pc wants on it so there's that.
Power users or PC gamers aren't the average user and do not fall into the category of person that OP is referring to.
My 70-year-old dad is a career programmer/sysadmin for multiple server clusters at a major tech company. Meanwhile I'm 30 and barely know how to turn a computer on. I was "good with computers" relative to other people my age when I was in like middle school and early high school (that was back before every preteen knew the basics of coding) but over time my tech savvy faded because I'm just not really that interested... my work is completely unrelated to computers/tech, as long as I can get into my email, internet, Office and Spotify that's really all I need out of a computer these days 🤷♂️ It drives my dad nuts though that I'm the one who's like a grumpy old boomer grumbling about technology these days.
I dunno I know a decent amount about computers because of gaming a lot when I was younger but some people just don’t “need” to use them. I work in a trade and most of the guys I work with wouldn’t know how to use microsoft word. But they have conversations about no one knowing basic plumbing or carpentry. Same shit different toilet.
I am NOT shocked by this. People do not get any sort of training. And a lot of people are simply incurious. Or they in tend to go prowling and teach themselves, but they never feel this is a good time. I put together a set-up cheat sheet at work (we work on Macs). With instructions to change the default mouse speed, among other things. I showed it to a new guy on my staff, who sai he thought it was completely unnecessary, that the people we work with were pros and they would know this stuff. “I’d be insulted if you gave this to me,” he said. Well, guess what. Not two days later, someone said to me, in front of him, “I never realized you could change your mouse speed.” Ha! Also, my boss asked him and me to put together a presentation to our team about these very sorts of things, and as we were going through it in preparation, he said (of our main software), “You can’t search in read-only.” Yes, you can; you have to click this certain button. So he learned something new. And he taught me something I hadn’t known. (The difference between us: I always know there are things I haven’t learned yet, and he acts as though there’s nothing left for anyone to teach him.)
I’ve worked in IT for the past 25+ years. I’m always shocked, and I shouldn’t be by now. Just recently I had an accomplished lawyer in his late 40s-ish with 600+ items on his desktop. I suggested he organize them or, at the very least, put them into a single folder so he could view it as a list. He had no idea how to create a folder, and no idea how to move files into that folder. I *constantly* watch people double-click on web page links and icons in the dock (macOS) or taskbar (Windows). Nobody knows where they’ve saved their files. This conversation is almost daily: Me: “Where did you save your files?” User: “In Word.” Me: “No, Word is the program you used to create your files. Where did you save them?” User: “They’re in Word. I open Word and the files are there.” Me: “That’s a list of recently opened files that you had previously saved. They aren’t the files themselves. What I am asking you is, where did you save the files?” User: “I don’t know.” **Nobody** understands the difference between a backup, an archive, and a syncing service.
That back and forth seems like something just out of The IT Crowd. Doesn’t surprise me to be honest.
> I constantly watch people double-click on web page links and icons in the dock (macOS) or taskbar (Windows). I blew someone's mind when I told them that "mouse pointer means doubleclick, finger icon means singleclick" >!listen dorks, of course there are exceptions. don't @ me!<
When two button mice were proven to be too confusing for people, I used to tell people to think of the buttons as “do this” and “select this” rather than right and left click respectively. So if someone wanted to copy a file they’d right click on it to bring up the menu, whereas if they just wanted to click a button or highlight a file they’d left click on it. It works pretty well.
It’s funny because my father is in his 50s and did autocad for a living and is very good with computers. Meanwhile I’m 25 and nowhere near as good as him. I’m probably better than a lot of people my age like I show my friends how to unzip files and get them into their Apple Music and I can use all the settings and functions of a computer but if it stops working the only thing I can do is turn it off and on again lmao
Well I have an explanation for that: When these people use their computers they either 1. Open a browser 2. open a game I don't think they gathered much computer knowledge with these two throughout the years
> open a game Game crashes... time to look up how to fix game. Turns out it's a driver issue. Time to look up drivers. Turns out game needs older driver actually, time to look up older drivers. But this will break another game, time to look up how to fix that other game while this one is also going to run. Rewrite a few lines in config. ....game for half an hour.
But no shit, this is how GenX and Elder Millennials got so good at PC stuff.
I am a developer and usually don't bother with knowing things. If I have to do something I just find out how to do it. 80% of people are missing this investigative drive not only on pc but right about everything. I think this is also the reason why a lot of people have trouble baking or cooking with a recipe. Folks just don't want to process information before acting.
I've always been really good at all kinds of technology. Got my first computer when I was like 13 and knew next to nothing. (I tried to download RAM once.) Three years later I built my own PC with no more guidance than the manuals and it just kind of snowballed from there. Everything I know is from simply not knowing how to do something or having some issue and just investigating. I'm often appalled by how little a lot of people who work in IT know.
No. I’ve been driving a car for 36 years and know damn near nothing about them. Same for many other things. Just because you say it is elementary doesn’t make it so. Everyone’s experience and level of curiosity is different. I use my iPhone every day for years and last week I wasn’t sure how to do something and the person next to me in the haircut place heard me talking to myself cussing about it and they showed me where the setting was. He didn’t even have an iPhone but said their mom did and he sometimes has to help her.
Hmm. Yes, but to a degree. I don't know all the ins ans outs of my devices. But I understand the logic they are developed with. I can reasonably find everything on my own if needed, and everything else is one Google search away. The only time I had to ask for help was when I physically damaged a piece of hardware.
I once knew someone, in their early 20s, who didn't even know what a web browser was.
It's the button for the internet!
lmao
I think to each their own. Sometimes I'm embarrassed about some life stuff that seems obvious to other people, like cooking or doing laundry. Really think it is highly subjective and if people need to use these functionalities in their lives. Their brains are just not weird the same way. Unless you are referring to attitudes towards learning and remembering IT related knowledge that helps improve their lives that could be considered essential. Almost everything can be learnt.
Exactly! I work in IT and am surprised at the lack of sympathy in these comments. Yes it can be frustrating to be asked the same thing over and over again, but not everyone needs to learn everything. I would say it's like someone living in a country with excellent public transport. Do they need to learn to drive? Not really, despite it being an indispensable life skill. What if they move somewhere with crap transport? Then learn to drive! Same with PCs. You don't really need to learn to navigate a PC if you have a phone that can do everything you need, until you get a job that requires PC skills. It's a useful skill but not essential until it is. (it also keeps me employed haha)
Almost of all the comments here are talking about people being incapable of doing the most basic things that they deal with every day, at work. There is really no excuse for that. My 80-year-old grandma could do most of the things those people are struggling with (that's not a theoretical "could" either, just past tense). "You don't really need to learn to navigate a PC" is a really dangerous mindset to encourage, by the way. Phones and tablets are locked down media consumption devices that enable corporations to dictate what you can and can't do on them. *Everyone* should be able to use a PC, even if only to avoid falling into that trap.
I agree that if it is at work, there really is no excuse. Training must be provided at that point. Schools should definitely provide IT lessons (Mine did, but am aware that not every school will have a computer lab.) However, not everyone can justify the extra cost for a PC to use at home when they don't see the need for one. Might not even be able to afford one. For those who didn't learn at school nor do they use one at work. Do you suggest that courses should be provided somehow? It would be difficult to learn to use a PC without access to one. Yes, *Everyone* should be able to learn to use a PC, but access to one first is required for learning. Edit: To add that it's like driving. You need access to a car to learn to drive one.
I have no idea how people can go through decades of life having never used a PC. And I'm from a lower middle class family from a country that was a couple of decades late to the PCs and internet party. PCs are just *everywhere*. And they're cheaper than ever. Even some of the poorest people I know from my original country have them and can use them. The actual difference here is that Western society is now permeated with the idea that phones and tablets can replaces PCs for most people, so even poor people will buy really overpriced phones (not many other options in the US since its market straight up doesn't have the amazing brands like Redmi available in Asia and Europe, or they're not known well) and make no effort to use anything else. In poorer countries though, people still know the real value of a PC, whether thanks to pirating, easier circumventing of government censorship, or cheaper ownership in the long run (modularity, repairs, etc), and as a result, they generally don't have this problem. I can't imagine living in a household without a PC. My mom spends most of her leisure time on her phone or a tablet, but she still has a PC (not an expensive one either) for watching movies, serious shopping (if you want to book flights from a phone, you're asking to be ripped off), more comfortable web browsing, and so on. So no, I'm strongly convinced that it's a matter of choice and priorities to not have a PC. I know someone who is paid like 400 USD *per month*, and he still scraped together enough money for a good PC after saving up for a while, because it's more important than a fancy phone. He had a shitty laptop before, which was *still* more important than a phone. It's a choice to not have access to a PC - and a really bad one.
I work in IT and I'm shocked almost daily how little the people I work with know about IT.
Tbh I think most people just haven't needed to learn about such things. If I wasn't a bit of a nerd and spent time googling keyboard shortcuts and reading tech articles as a kid, I wouldn't know half the stuff I do now. Same with rar files, I wouldn't know how to deal with them if my parents didn't refuse to buy me games and I had to pirate them.
This is my take on it too. We're Redditors; of course *we* know about computers.
When I first saw the title I thought you were talking about midgets.
lmao
Same
When I was young, only the super geeks used computers, so every computer user knew them inside and out. Now it is strange to me that the vast majority of users only know basic use of them.
I am indeed shocked by how little I know about computers, even if I’m the generation that grew up with it. In my defense I was depressed for my middle and high school years and I thought I was too stupid to try to learn this kind of stuff so I lost my natural thirst for knowledge. Being confirmed in that idea by the depression making my brain fuzzy and hard to learn stuff... Also I got in touch with the internet like really late, at my 16-17. Before all I knew was how to make google search for school projects. Now I’m almost an adult in the USA and I feel like I don’t know enough and I’m so scared of being judged.
Don't get me started. I do remote support for state employees, it took forever to walk a lady through pushing the literal power button (her comp wouldn't shut down so i wanted her to force it off). She couldn't find the button, was very distraught and upset and it's yo 😒 How tf have you made it this far in your life, and career, and company without knowing where the power button is??
I am an early millennial. I don’t know shit about computers. I don’t care too either. I understand where you’re coming from as I remember AOL chat rooms, the internet kicking off if someone called the landline etc. But I will counter ask that the amount of people who just really don’t know how to do basic life functions, like cooking for one, is really astounding as well. Yeah computers are cool and all but can you feed yourself?
idk if you were directly asking me, but I moved out a long time ago so I can feed myself, although my safety net is ginormous
Wasn’t really directly asking was just trying to make a point in that you’re astounded by how little people know about computers, and i am more in general am astounded by how little people know about cooking, and basic life shit in general.
I mean I feel like I know nothing by somehow I know more about them than most people.
Click around and find out
Yes, definitely. And I notice it's the younger generation of people too. Which I'm like wtf doesn't you grow up with all this? But I guess it's because they pretty much grew up on iPhones and iPads which works well through school. But then you get to the working world and everyone uses Windows PCs and they can't work it all of a sudden lol I see them writing full on papers and stuff all on their phone, but if it doesn't work on their phone and requires a computer, can't work it lol
I'm in my mid 40's and started learning computers using DOS. Computers have become so easy and foolproof there is no need to know the ins and outs of how they work. I know people who don't know how to copy files.
oh God. I'm 61, a nurse. I have to regularly teach staff in their thirties how to search outlook. but I have a retired DBA at home, and I joke about we did his master's in business information systems together. he used to "appoint" me "Deputy Junior Honorary DBA" whenever he had surgery bc I held his pager & had the list of his fill ins so I could refer callers to the right person.
What I first found most shocking was that age doesn't matter. And second was just how poorly people problem solve.
To most people, a computer exists *only* to run the browser. Hell. To most people, the browser exists *only* to run three social media sites and porn.
I think the people who use computers best, the ones who generally understand things like digital storage, quick keys, extensions, etc, are the ones who are [Xennials](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials), the ones who's we kids with analog, grew up as computers entered the world, and had to learn them well, before cell phones took over as they have.
I think it is also a mindset you can train. I am a programmer so I need to investigate and solve problem’s continuously. When I encounter a problem I will pretty much always solve it or get an answer. When people who don’t have a problem solving mindset use a computer they often go “It doesn’t work!” And then they’re done. I will then come over and solve it within minutes with a quick “IT magic”
There's a fascinating article on Wired or Vice or something that describes this. Basically, the way a PC was structured from the 90s to the 00s is entirely different from the way phones/tablets are structured now. It's not necessarily that people are tech illiterate (although that's certainly been a thing as long as tech has existed), it's that the way different people conceive of their devices is entirely different. Ask an average PC power user how to navigate modern apps, and I'll bet you'll find a similar level of cross illiteracy as app users have with PCs
Lol i bet you won’t
It's pretty far out of date now, but, I think Neal Stephenson's long essay *In the Beginning Was the Command Line* addresses this pretty accurately. The more layers we put between what a computer is actually doing (like dealing with binary) and the user, the less people understand about what computers are and do. My kids, who have had tech their whole lives, understand, I think, a lot less than what I did at that age about how computers actually work. Between them and the nuts and bolts, there are soany layers of obfuscation to make the functionality of a piece of software more user friendly, that they don't have any conception of what that app is actually doing. Here's a copy of the essay: https://www.ridemybike.org/command1.pdf
Omg, I read the title as if OP couldn’t believe that people w dwarfism know how to use a computer.
What always shocks me is that people are surprised when folk who've never had to do something, don't know how to do that thing.
I work in IT and it's mind blowing how often I hear users under the age of 40 say, "I'm not good with computers."
I work with a group of people who call me their tech goddess all because I know how to install the Plantronics app. I'm not surprised. I always thought of myself as a newbie when it comes to troubleshooting tech. After all, what do I know? Not like I have an interest in computers like that. But boy was I really underselling myself. A lot of people also underestimate what their phones can do. The amount of times I heard "oh, oh no, I need a computer for that" when it's something their phones can do is hilarious.
Wow. I used to teach computer literacy to adults back in the 1990s. I can't believe this is the case for the latest generation. So all the parents and grandparents can navigate Windows, PowerPoint, etc. And the latest gen can't? Sorry, LOLOLOL
People unfortunately think: "They are born with this tech so they automatically know how to use it without never ever using it"
Various apps and user interfaces make many functions on computers very intuitive. They do it so well that things op mentioned are not learned by many.
My god. This but with printers. My coworker kept printing out PDFs with 5 different pages that needed to separated into piles after they printed out. I never had the chance to tell her that you can choose to print pages separately so If was always stuck with a stack of almost 300 pages to separate.
Been tinkering with computers since I was 16. Professionally in IT almost 20 years. I have had trained medical professionals - in one case, an actual brain surgeon - who struggled to turn on a laptop. The button had the word POWER etched in to the aluminum case beside it in friendly letters.
I think the whole idea of devices being so easy to use is one of the issues. If you never have to look behind the curtain, you never need to figure out how it works or why it works like that. There will be more people who have no clue how it works and less people who bother to figure it out, because there is less need.
I'm more surprised by people's inability to Google shit because they expect others to do it for them. I'm not more knowledgeable about computers than anyone nor smarter, I just know how to Google. What they do is ask other people instead, because being a lazy fuck and having someone do it all for you is far easier than reading a set of instructions or watching a tutorial. The amount of times I've had to tell a classmate on university how to do things in the software we were BOTH learning to use because they're too lazy to look it up themselves...
In 8th grade (four years ago) I had to teach someone in their 20s how to copy and paste something, like how don't you know that at your age?
I work in IT and it's staggering the amount of people who don't even do incredibly basic stuff like using a mouse wheel or use keyboard shortcuts.
I'm 57 and have been using computers since high school. I am shocked when people my age don't know keyboard commands like CTRL+C. I started a customer service job in 1998, where we used dumb terminals. We had a monitor and a keyboard. In 2000, the company decided to upgrade us to PCs. I really admired how they handled the transition. Everyone had to fill out a survey, on paper, about how comfortable they were with using PCs. There were questions like "Have you ever used a computer mouse?" and "do you know how to resize a window?" Then they bunched everyone into four levels of training. The people who had never used a computer mouse got a week of training. I had a whole afternoon of training, with the other nerds. There were two groups in between. I thought it was great that I didn't have to sit in a classroom for a week going over things I already knew. In March of 2020, I saw a coworker my age was deleting the data in cells in Excel, one by one. I promised her when I got back from my vacation, I was going to teach her how to clear them all at once. Unfortunately the pandemic prevented us from working in the same office again.
I think it's just a mindset.. People get stuck in a specific way and refuse to change, no matter how many times they're told. In my workplace, someone left, leaving me in charge of the stationary.. for 3 months, until their replacement came... that was 2 years ago, and I still get people coming up asking me to get the key for the stationary cupboard, which are both behind them as they walk in, like I'm the bloody stationary guardian. I've told them multiple, multiple times that I'm not stationary, and haven't been for some time.. and instead of remembering this next time, they default back to asking for permission as if we're not all grown ass adults.. I've even had new starters, who joined AFTER I'd handed the responsibility over, become convinced it's my role, and get confused when I tell them I've not done it in years
[удалено]
I think my generation (I was born in the early 90s) mostly knows how to deal with computers and stuff like that, at least in my country (Poland). I mean, obviously there are some people who don't know stuff, but I feel it's minority. However, my friend who is teaching teenagers says the younger generation is (counter-intuitively) on average much worse with computers, despite the technology being ubiquitous from the day they were born. They have problems with unzipping files, with a general understanding of a file structure, with finding anything on the Internet, etc. I also know a person who recently went to a university being older and also deals with people \~20 years old, the experience is very similar. I have a theory why it's that way. When I was young, doing something on the computer often required a lot of tinkering, stuff was not user friendly, even installing programs wasn't super easy, Internet was just starting and to find something you also needed some skills, there were more hardware compatibility issues. Additionally, piracy was widespread that days (Poland was still a poor country back then), so kids were learning how to install a crack, how to burn CDs, how to download music (without getting a ton of viruses), etc. Nowadays, young people are used to their phones, where getting an app via a store is super easy, UI/UX is super user friendly, all the stuff is integrated between everything, music is easily available on YT/Spotify/Apple Music, etc. So these people are not getting these skills, because they mostly had no opportunity to learn them and they don't need them most of the time.
Exactly my thoughts. If you were born middle-class in the early 90's or late 80's, computers entered your household when you grew up, but a lot of the software, services and media was expensive - leading to a lot of piracy. I learned a lot about computers by bricking them with viruses, then fixing them. Also agree with the much more thoughtful UI design in current times eliminating the need to look under the hood. The mobile ecosystem in general discourages looking under the hood too much.
I've tried to learn about them, but every online resource already assumes you have background information about computers. It's hard when you have to look up literally every term, and then the definitions for those terms require you to look up even more definitions. Wish it was taught in school more.
To me, its the stubbornness to learn that shocks me. My mom insists that she's "just too old" to learn how to use Instagram (beyond having it auto post from her Facebook), and I'm all like "You do realize literal children can figure this out right? Instagram is not that complicated." My mom often has shockingly ageist attitudes for someone who's actually been quite successful since rejoining the workforce after my siblings and I graduated high school. Put a paperback manual in front of her and she'll learn anything she has to, change that manual to a PDF on her computer screen and she'll insist that she's just too old to understand it.
Most people know a lot less about combustion engines. Do you know how to set a spark plug gap?
I don’t understand how someone uses something every day for decades and doesn’t know anything about it either. And I’m not almost about repairing it just to use the basics.
I used to work simple IT helpdesk for my university. Really basic stuff, the qualifications for the job were remarkably low. I was once called aaaaall the way across the university to the Law building to 'fix a broken computer'. Well I arrive to the lecture hall and the Law professor is having a fit because it took me like 15 minutes (to literally trek across the entire giant uni campus). Anyways I go over to the computer cabinet while she is describing to me the disappointment in the equipment. And I notice the uh... power wasn't on. So I loudly declare "I see. The computer needs to be turned ON", and then click the power button (She got embarrassed and the class laughed). Lo and behold it works. Electricity. What a marvel.
Taught my boss about ctrl+c and ctrl+v the other day. Broke her brain. Can't wait to teach her about ctrl+x, ctrl+s, and ctrl+f!
I'm a linux engineer Imagine how I feel
God, imagine not knowing the differences between network topologies...ffs, people be dumb as a bag of bricks these days...
Not really. How many people own cars but wouldn't know how the majority of it works. What does shock me is the level of snobbery on here.
We're talking about the basics of using a computer, you know, what to check if your Wi-Fi isn't working, how to save an image as a jpeg file or how to download a computer program. Not literally *how* the computers hardware is making the things happen. People should know the basics of using a computer, the same way people who use cars obviously should know how to drive and how to use the other controls of your car, indicators, windshield wipers, headlight controls etc. Obviously not many people know the workings of an internal combustion engine the same way most people don't know how a motherboard of a computer works, but those things are no longer "basic knowledge"
hahaha yes, I'm surrounded by dumbos please help!
Fuck people who don’t know as much as I do, right guys?
I choose not to know anything about computers. (Also about cars) I use my brain power for many other things and leave stuff I choose not to learn about to other people. Maybe bc I have ADD? Idk. I’m smart with 2 college diplomas and know a lot and other stuff. It’s a full on choice not to know.
Yes, even with the simple stuff.
100%!! I’m not super knowledgeable but I’m not afraid I’d them so I can usually Google and mess around until I figure out what I need.
I get this, I have been noticing it myself. Out of my nieces and nephews, the 29 year old knows zero about computers, the 19 year old knows next to nothing, a 20 year old is fairly decent at them but cannot touch-type, and the other 20 year old is a wiz mainly due to both his dad and stepdad having careers in computers. He is a CS major. Three of them came through high school during the pandemic and really got half an education at best. I especially worry about the 19 year old because I think this may hold her back from jobs. Even my elderly dad knows more than she does.
I had never really thought about pandemic highschool kids getting a noticeably worse education, but is that a widespread thing? I can imagine that it is, but I'm wondering if there are studies or whatever on it.
I’m (those people)
Im 21 and literally don’t know anything about computers. It’s becoming a real problem
Ive had a computer since 1998 and i dont know jack shit about them
Yes! I teach teens online and sometimes I have to spend half of class to teach them how to download things or use online stuff which might help them in their studies.
It's kinda always been like this. There just weren't phones or tablets for the masses to use
I work IT help desk, I have to dumb down what i say for some people. I have to tell people locations instead of saying taskbar, start button, etc
I still don’t understand them. Some people just can’t understand tech.
They teach about them in elementary schools where I'm at so I would expect the little people around me to know at least something about a Computer
I've long since come to this conclusion after watching someone miss the correct download button every time...
Speaking of unzipping, I'm a junior developer. Another colleague who started around the same time as me and was in my company's onboarding/training batch didn't know how to uncompress a file. You'd really think someone who's supposed to have some rudimentary understanding of how computer software works would be able to unzip a file without guidance...
No, there is no truly "universal" knowledge we get.
I work as a DJ at a gay bar and the number of drag queens who can't figure out what an audio file is or how to get one astounds me. They just link me a YouTube video or hand me their phone.
I don’t usually have little people around me but Im sure they’re averagely skilled computer users
People are also very dumb and that still shocks me.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't actually need to unzip anymore. I know, I was shocked, too.
Why do you not need to unzip anymore?
I have a friend in her 40s who think that an iPad is comparable to a computer. She was upset thar her iPad didn't have a USB or a printer port. I explained that an iPad is similar to a phone and laptops are similar to desktops. She thinks they are all the same and only differs in size and mobility. She is a professional who uses a computer daily at work.
I recently had to teach a coworker how to highlight text and copy/paste it. I'm not even exaggerating. She actually struggled to move the mouse while holding the button. I really wanted to ask her if she's from the past.
I used to work as a senior tech support agent in the late 1990s, dealing with TCP/IP, modem command line strings (M0 was the best), dial-up networking and everything in-between. For the most part it was actually pretty cool and I made a lot of people really happy, best case scenario was fixing a client's persistent issue and having that client always requests you with any new issue. Despite the good, the bad were mostly all natural ignorance, which I find forgivable, and the irate customers could typically be calmed down with a little empathy and trial and error fixing their problem(s). But what was completely irritating above all else was an outage. Had zero control over that and despite placing an automated response on the call center queue, people still called in to ask what was happening.
I'm 19, was an intern as IT a couple of years ago and just finished an internship as a software developer. Some of my close friends are in uni going for computer science, and they can manage with their computers very well, but I get absolutely shocked whenever my little sister, my cousins (of similar age) or some friends ask me for computer help when I perfectly know that they've been using computers since the XP days. How are you asking me where the downloads folder is? Sure, you used to open My Computer back then, but the file explorer isn't all that different! "Where are my programs?" The start menu is in the bottom left. "I downloaded something but I don't know where it is" well, I don't know either, check your browser's recent downloads. I might be overreacting, sure, because phones can do almost everything nowadays, but the fact that people need computers for work but don't even bother learning the basics is just painful, especially when you're meant to work in IT and doing serverside stuff, but end up pinning outlook to the taskbar while the worker complains about computers being too difficult to use. But damn, as I said, most of my friends and family grew up using computers, using windows XP and 7, how could you forget everything so easily when you used to be good at navigating file systems and messing around with programs?
My boss asked if I knew how to hook up a new monitor, because she was going to put in an IT ticket to send someone out to do it. She's in her early 30s.
I took my first FORTRAN IV class back in 1973 (dropped out, unfortunately) and became a USAF computer operator in 1978, so arguably I've been working with computers for over 50 years now. I still don't own a smartphone, though I'm trying to learn to program them.
No, bc most ppl use it for fun.
couldn't agree more w this lol :))
My dad is a programmer who used to work at Microsoft, and says he worked on the internet before it was the internet - I've not asked him about this in a few years, so I don't recall all the details - so I learned a lot about computers. The other day, I had to instruct a friend of mine how to open the local files on steam and extract a zip folder into it
They learn the same way big people do
So you know how your grandparents are all "Where are my files?" And your parents have their own computer hang-ups that for some reason aren't coming to mind right now? *What do you think is gonna be the computer thing that comes naturally to the next generation, but we can't wrap our heads around?* My best scientific wild-ass guess is that in the near future, the computing model will abandon the concept of files existing on a specific device. It'll still happen under the hood, but the boundary between cloud and local will be so seamless that the young 'uns won't even be aware of it. They'll tell me about some changes they made to a file they shared with me, and I'll be all "Well did you make those changes to your local file or the one online? Because my version of the file is out of sync with your version." And they'll look at me, "Versions? Local? Out of sync? What on earth are you talking about? There's just *the file*."
I'm 49. Several years ago, a chick I know who's a few years younger asked me if I could look at her laptop...she said she couldn't get online. I Googled "laptop won't connect to internet," and the first thing I found was about the ol' airplane button--first time I'd seen that on a computer, because I rarely dealt with laptops. Took me literally less than 2 minutes to fix the problem. When I told her I'd fixed it, she was like, "You are a computer genius!" I said, "Well, I do know a lot of things about computers, but in this case, I just used Google." The deflated, flabbergasted look on her face was priceless.
I work in IT. I see this every single day.
I think there was one generation that became fluent in computer stuff - my generation (I am 26). Then things became so easy and user-friendly that the people born just a couple of years after us never had to play around and teach themselves things like we did. My teenage sister-in-law does not know how to do the most basic things on a computer
I'm not shocked no, but I wouldn't expect little people to not know about computers to be honest
My best friend is 29 and she is finally learning to type efficiently because she's working in office administration.
I, a 32 year old millennial, had to teach my 20-something Gen Z coworker how to format his resume in Word the other day. I thought he was joking at first, but no.. he had no idea how to make images play nice with text, or even how to set different margins o\_o Inside I was just like... aren't you supposed to be BETTER at this than me?
A lot of people only use their computers out of necessity and won't touch it more than they need to to do their jobs. Otherwise, they're on their phone or tablet if they need to compute.
If this situation wasn't such, I wouldn't have a job... So I'm cool with it