I have a number of compatriots from another board I post on who are mostly in IT. I'm not going to tell you which board it is, but I've met a bunch of them, and they all seemed to at least tolerate me. But as I said, they're mostly in IT. And a lot of them are around my age or a bit younger. Basically, early to middle millennials. For the record, I was born 1985 so that makes me an early millennial. There's a couple older, and a couple younger, but most of us are in our 30s.
So, at a meet of a bunch of us last year, we were sat around in a pub and one of them, who works as a network manager in a school, observed that Kids These Days are next to technologically illiterate compared to us cranky old cloud-shouting millennials. That zoomers don't seem to get things technological other than on a very surface level, and asking them to do anything vaguely complicated or sort things out sends them into tailspins of confusion. Now this isn't a hard and fast rule, mind, but basically, it's something like this, together with an estimate of how computer literate people of this generation are.
Silent Generation. Born before 1946. They will struggle massively with computers. Those jokes about how "boomers" have Windows desktops full of Copy of Copy of Copy of (3) and fifty toolbars in their browsers? That actually refers to people this age. Basically it's a 2000s "helping granny with her e-mails" meme fast forwarded twenty years because of the shocking lack of originality in current year about things. Of course, nowadays people of this generation will be struggling with dementia more likely as they're of that age so it's kind of the same really. 0/10.
Early Boomers. They sort of get it. The children of post war austerity and rationing struggle with technology but aren't totally befuddled by it. A lot of them will have learnt about analog circuitry at school and will have some idea on a fundamental level of how things work. They also will likely have grown up with manual filing systems and been in workplaces that ran entirely on it, so the concept of files, folders, directories, and drives isn't alien to them. They'll also get why a desktop is called a desktop. Incidentally, it will be people of this age who will have designed the first Graphical User Interfaces in the 1980s and they will have based them on what they knew. Which was manual filing systems and a desktop as a metaphor. However they will likely struggle with more abstract representations of it and with online security and suchlike. They will likely be paranoid of viruses and malware and scams. This generation also will include the first group of real greybeards who programmed computers by manually podging the opcodes into memory on mainframes using a switch. In other words, REAL PROGRAMMERS. On average, 5/10.
Later Boomers. The generation who grew up in the beige decade that style forgot. They will have been in the workplace when computers started to infiltrate them and will be able to grok them as a necessity of such things. They will understand a lot of the systems behind it and will be fastidious about updates and things. What they will struggle with, though, is an understanding of how they work at a fundamental level. They also tend to be a bit disorganised with how it all works though. They will not generally fall for scams or viruses or malware but will struggle to understand how to get rid of them. They also have a slight fear of things going wrong and lack of confidence in it. 6/10.
Generation X. Gods amongst users. They will have had 8-bits as children and teenagers and 16-bits as students, and the accessibility combined with the innate curiosity of youth will mean some of them will have taught themselves to program just because. They will have in the PC era and early internet have tinkered and built things. If you wanted any web-based or online application building, people from this generation will have done it. They never had techno-fear in the workplace like later boomers did because they had the confidence to just do it and to solve the problem logically. 10/10, and that's just amongst normies. Amongst techbros, well, they will have forgotten more about programming, systems, development, design, and so forth than you ever knew. One of my compatriots from the board I referred to above is of this generation and makes astronomical sums designing and maintaining software for airport security scanners. He also knows networking, multiple programming languages, and for fun taught himself ARM assembly language to brew up his own custom home automation suite.
Early Millennials. Hello. I don't like avocado toast and I have never painted my house grey, but I like to think I'm pretty technologically literate. I grew up with an Atari STE and DOS and Win9x PCs and despite not being a techbro I can navigate most things here. I and my age-mates will have been the first people to get smartphones and tablets. They're okay, I suppose, but I don't really use them as my main productivity systems or fun systems. They are more like an electronic multi-tool. I also don't like how their applications tend to obfuscate things in how they work. But most people around my age are confident enough with computers and how to work them properly. We're more likely to be frustrated by more modern systems, which seem to try to be both dumbed down and obscurantist at the same time. 9/10.
Later Millennials. Pretty much the same as early millennials but with more touchscreens. Here is where people start to get a bit confused by the idea of desktops as a metaphor. They also start to think that things are simply storeable and have bad habits like saving to the desktop or relying on the search function. They also will struggle to use the more advanced features in productivity software or not know that they can do this. After all, the "apps" on their phones do that for them, don't they? Well, yes and no. But still. 6/10.
Zoomers. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Zoomers grew up with smartphones and tablets and touchscreen interfaces. As such they will be mentally mutilated beyond all recognition. Some of them actually think that each "app" saves files in its own separate "pot" and can't be accessed by other things. This is the fault of smartphones, which, when, for instance, attaching a file to an e-mail or a text message, will ask you which "app" you want to attach a file from, so you end up opening your camera app to upload a photo or Adobe to upload a PDF. They think that because you don't need to know things, there is no need to, and the interfaces of such devices discourage this. They will have never used a "real" version of MS Office (i.e. 2003 or earlier) and as such will expect everything to be dumbed down like Office 2007 onwards does. They also insist on typing questions into Google rather than what they are looking up. They kid themselves that they understand technology because they can work a smartphone or tablet not realising that those devices, because they have touchscreens and thus a limited scope for a user interface, do things for you. If presented with errors, they will get very upset and not know what to do to solve it. This is an attitude encouraged by software developers in current year who will insist on error messages like "Error: An error has occured." As such, they suffer from learned helplessness. 2/10.
I would go on, but the basic thing seems to be that the more peoples' devices do things for them and don't require effort to understand, it breeds a lack of confidence in users. I shudder to think what Gen Alpha will get up to. What with AI being incorporated into everything, I fully expect them to treat it as an oracle and cling desperately to "but the AI says this!" as an answer to everything.
This lack of a skill wall, incidentally, also explains why the internet in current year is such a toilet. Without a minimum level of nous being required to post things online, every narcissist and loudmouth can spew their ill-informed shite across the web. Exhibit A: TikTok. Exhibit B: Instacrap. Exhibit C: X, formerly Twitter. And so forth.
(IN24/5)