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My favourite one that surprised me and continues to surprise people: kids that have grown up with smartphones and iPads from birth are computer illiterate. Peo

• deleted 7y ago
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• tracer4201 7y ago
  Not a parent yet, but I certainly don’t plan on giving my kid a touch device... certainly not with internet access. I grew up using the internet as a 90s kid. Today, the internet is even more messed up.
  • danieldk 7y ago
    Our 5yo has an iPod Touch to play music. But she also has a Linux PC (she enjoys typing things and playing gcompris). But probably our best purchase is a Micro:Bit. Her programs are still simple, but it’s clear how much she enjoys being creative and that she can make the Micro:Bit do what she wants. We are not forcing her to use tech in any way. The Linux PC and Micro:Bit are just there and it’s up to her own curiosity to explore them when she feels like it. I think the problem is that TV and iPads are convenient for parents. You can put your kid behind one, and they’ll occupy themselves for hours. Whereas with real computers, Micro:Bits, or even Lego, you have to help them understand.
  • marpstar 7y ago
    My kids (9 and 6) started with touch devices but are increasingly preferring an actual PC. I just bought a Dell G3 gaming laptop (in addition to the Lenovo PC we already owned) so that I didn't have to give up my MacBook every time they wants to play Garry's Mod. For first-person "builder" games (current favorite is "Scrap Mechanic") WASD+mouse-look is a lot easier for them than tapping and dragging on a touch screen. Also: larger displays. Forget mouse+keyboard dexterity...most other kids don't seem to even know about the Esc, Enter, Space, and Shift keys.
• kkarakk 7y ago
  Yup, my bro in law panicked when he realized this - even school assignments are on a touch and record based interface so no interaction- and got my nephew a low powered windows 10 machine(dual core i3 from 2013 so the thing CHUGS) and gives him "assignments" to make something creative with 3D printing or just type a story out in MS Word The idea is to get him comfortable with older computing paradigms and make him appreciate "new" software via exposing him to low powered hardware and how difficult it is to use comparatively. He tried doing a raspberry pi computer for the kid but said it was too underpowered to do anything meaningful+setup was a hassle
• Buldak 7y ago
  I see this observation on HN pretty often, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. Do later generations know fewer things, or just different things?
  • diffeomorphism 7y ago
    That seems like the wrong question. The topic was computer literacy and knowing different, non-computer things is irrelevant and knowing stuff about Fortnite, while computer-related, is not literacy.
    • alexgmcm 7y ago
      Yeah, also while in the past Fortnite might have been replaced by Counterstrike - that allowed players to run dedicated servers, it was itself a Half Life mod etc. so there was just more opportunities to learn technical skills. Now it seems it's all about consuming services in walled gardens - no learning required, or even allowed.
• Joeri 7y ago
  I chuckle to my self sometimes when I see a toddler walk up to a TV or video advert and try touching it a few times, then walk away confused because what they thought was a touch screen isn't doing anything when they touch it. I also chuckled when my 2yo did this, but stopped chuckling when he actually got it to switch channels. Turns out our tv has small near invisible touch controls beneath the screen and we just didn’t know. of course, he wouldn’t stop messing with the tv after discovering this, and found a control combination (undocumented) to put the tv in demo mode: superbright, oversaturated and automatically forgetting its settings after a while. I was not amused.
  • julienreszka 7y ago
    Hilarious
• UweSchmidt 7y ago
  I'm curious if, and exactly when, this might lead to sweet consulting gigs for the then elderly, computer savvy generation that I consider myself part of, similar to old COBOL devs called back from retirement. It seems that the ressources for people who actually want to learn computers are excellent and are getting better all the time, so maybe there will always be enough well trained people coming up to solve all problems.
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• mchaver 7y ago
  It seems like when you grow up with some important but finicky technology, it tends to sow a certain amount of knowledge in the populace. I notice there tends to be a lot more car and mechanic knowledge in the older generations than say those in their early 40s and below. To drive a car it seems like you had to do a lot more troubleshooting on your own (didn't have a mobile phone to call the car shop). Same thing for those that were young in the 1990s and had a computer.
• Terretta 7y ago
  Not sure if this is different from growing up mechanically illiterate: a whole new generation growing up not knowing what a spark plug or timing belt is. Engines are finally entering their appliance phase, just in time to be replaced by electric motors. It’s okay for computers to become appliances too.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 7y ago
    Not exactly. Being able to use a keyboard or a mouse is different. By comparison, is not being able to drive a car. I sure know nothing about engine but can drive. A computer illiterate needs the minimum of being able to maneuver it. Files might disappear, they are an abstraction after all.
    • Terretta 7y ago
      Surely “mouse” is not a particularly modern artifact. Remember Scotty from Star Trek trying to talk into one? Mouse was because you couldn’t manipulate directly, iPad you can. Keyboard is because you can’t talk to it. But now one can. As for not driving a car... why would you need to know how once it can drive itself better? The car’s purpose is to get you from A to B, not to be driven. Clearly we are on an appliance trajectory there as well. Knowing how to drive is a skill that only a few generations may ever need.
      • Fire-Dragon-DoL 7y ago
        I absolutely agree, the problem is that we are not there yet. While I can see mouse being pointless, voice recognition is slow, problematic (can you imagine saying something private by voice, like firing someone?) and prone to error. Keyboard usage is still very necessary for any profession that need to be efficient at using a computing device. And for multi language speakers (using 2 terms from different languages in the same sentence for example), voice recognition is very behind. Not to mention is very behind on non-english languages (this is based solely on my experience with italian though, no objective data)
      • ahartmetz 7y ago
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 7y ago
  Good, looks like training my 1 year old to use a controller instead of a tablet was a good idea LOL
• roarl 7y ago
  My mother is a perfect example of this. She is fascinated that my 6-year old nephew just gets the iPad, he's unafraid to use it and can do so much! At his age I edited the startup of MS-DOS to free up RAM for playing games. Times have changed indeed.
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• apostacy 7y ago
  Some related threads from a few weeks ago about rising computer illiteracy among kids: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21237540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21237540 I really have noticed that elderly people who have no computer experience have a better grasp of computing concepts than most kids. They understand physical media stores sounds and pictures, so it easy to explain that pictures and music lives on their sd card, like a phonograph or roll of film, except much more. They understand that you need an internet connection to communicate, like how you need your phone hooked up to make phone calls, since they have all had to deal with the phone company to get their phone working. And it is really simple to explain that a wifi router is just extending the internet into your living room. They understand sending an email and attaching a picture to it (use the paper clip and pick the picture). I was even able to explain the file system to someone, by saying that instead of just printing out his letters, he can store them inside a "folder", and print them out later as many times as he wants. These concepts seem utterly lost on so many kids. They will send you a series of screenshots of a website instead of just sending the url. They are constantly losing data. They can not tell you where their data "lives"; whether it is in their iCloud or their phone or whatever. It's not that horrible, but I am disappointed because I honestly thought that by now we would all be more computer literate. Isn't this what schools are supposed to teach?
• siruncledrew 7y ago
  The funniest related instance I've encountered was: > at work with a 20 year old intern in the stock room > clock on the wall above the door > intern asks "Hey, do you know what time it is?" > I look at the clock and say, "5:30pm" > intern says "Thanks, my phone was dead" I was in shock for the rest of the day a person less than a decade younger than me doesn't know how to read an analog clock.
  • banmeagaindan2 7y ago
    Somebody with a wristwatch can develop a superior sense of timing when working. It is quick and distraction free. Wristwatches are underrated. In the trades a $20 watch could pay you $x000 a year if it saved some minutes each day.
    • Breza 7y ago
      In EMT training, they had to repeatedly tell us all to get watches with a second hand. It felt like the stone ages.
• d21d3q 7y ago
  > I chuckle to my self sometimes when I see a toddler walk up to a TV or video advert and try touching it a few times, then walk away confused because what they thought was a touch screen isn't doing anything when they touch it. I've seen in shopping mall little girl standing in front of aquarium, trying to move around fishes with her finger...
• api 7y ago
  Same thing happened with cars. Nobody knows how to work on them anymore because they became easier to use and more reliable.