Throwaway account. I am skeptical of the lemma that "[Gen Z's] formative tech years were spent using software that exists to be user-friendly." The only place

Throwaway account. I am skeptical of the lemma that "[Gen Z's] formative tech years were spent using software that exists to be user-friendly." The only place this lemma is used explicitly is in the central argument: "They may be digital natives, but young workers were raised on user-friendly apps – and office devices are far less intuitive" The examples given in the article evidence software that exists to be easy to use, particularly to access content, but not to be user-friendly in and of itself: "They grew up using apps to get work done and are used to the ease that comes with Apple operating systems." "...apps like Instagram and TikTok are so easy to use that younger people expect everything else to be a breeze, too. When it’s not, they’re more likely to give up." "'It takes five seconds to learn how to use TikTok,' [Simon] said. 'You don’t need an instruction book, like you would with a printer. Content is so easy to access now that when you throw someone a simple curveball, they’ll swing and they miss, and that’s why Gen Z can’t schedule a meeting.'" These distinct purposes seem to be conflated in the article. The article also seems to conflate user-friendliness with intuitiveness, and asserts that desktop computing and office devices are less intuitive. A critical aspect of user-friendliness that is absent in the article is freedom: "that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software" [1] The difference is clear when you substitute "easy to use" for "powerful and reliable" in this quote: [2] "The idea that we want software to be powerful and reliable comes from the supposition that the software is designed to serve its users. If it is powerful and reliable, that means it serves them better. But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove. Malicious features, such as spying on the users, restricting the users, back doors, and imposed upgrades are common in proprietary software..." The article gives an example of a user killing a laptop by repeatedly accepting a pop-up without reading it. I found this passage from the article interesting: "Dell used its own survey of respondents between the ages of 18 and 26 to find that 56% of respondents said “they had very basic to no digital skills education.” A third of them said their education had not provided them “with the digital skill they need to propel their career”. What they know comes from the apps they use on their own time, not the tech supplies at Office Depot." I'm curious if some of this would be better explained as user behavior being optimized for easy to use but unfree software. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....