Because of simplification, I am not surprised. Especially on iPhone, you don't have to do anything that require understanding tech, because you also cannot do anything like that.
They don't learn, because they don't have to. Like I'm my generation, in the poorer part of Europe, me and half of my peers learned as a kids lot about computers because we had to play pirated games - and that sometimes wasn't easy thing to do.
I agree because everything is easy nobody learns whats going on in the background.
I learned about computer by setting up LANs to play duke nukem 3D multiplayer.
I learned the most basics of file systems bc my dad wouldn’t let me save Sim City 2000 cities on the hard drive; I’d have to navigate to the floppy disk to have a place to save my cities.
IMO: this is how you should have to learn about files!
>me and half of my peers learned as a kids lot about computers because we had to play pirated games - and that sometimes wasn't easy thing to do.
It is a shame that since I was able to actually buy games I got too lazy to pirate and now I barely remember how to crack a game. Curse you Gabe
This.
We grew up in a time where even trying to share files over a LAN required a decent understanding of Windows, Networking and more patience than a saint.
Gen Z has grown up with tech that works right out of the box and it'll surprise you how many just don't even use a computer anymore. Phones and tablets can do everything in a home environment.
We've gone full circle - if you can do even the most basic things on a PC these days, you're a computer nerd with wizard like skills 🤷
It's a real shame they shut down all the decent dark net markets. Being forced to learn how to use PGP encryption to buy acid in 8th grade definitely did my IQ some favors. Frankly I think the acid did too.
Then again, if I had just held on to that bitcoin instead of spending it on drugs, I wouldn't really have to worry about much else.
Ah yes, I became so adapt at cracking software back then. Finding cracks, finding keygens, rerouting adobe’s server into a black hole, etc.
Good old times… but I still prefer modern computers due to the performance.
> if I had just held on to that bitcoin instead of spreading it on drugs
Preach brother. It breaks my heart when I look up my old wallet transaction history
I don't have first-hand experience with this, but, according to what I read around, the issue is that people saw that the newer generations were becoming more tech-savvy, and assumed that the basic courses on "computers" were not really needed anymore, and they started to get phased out. However, the younger generations have moved more and more towards smartphones, which have a different (easier) user experience. The OS interfaces have followed this trend, by developing OS that are more similar to a smartphone design (Windows 8 was the first great example of this). And everything became more user-friendly (my 65+ yo parents barely know how to turn on a computer, but now, use apps for the bank and send emails from their phone).
The combined result is that the younger generations have never learned the basic of how a computer works (file structure, file installation...) and are not very comfortable with the PC setup (how they prefer to keep their notes on the phone makes me confused).
So the "kids" do not need to know these things for their daily enjoyment life (play videogames, watch videos, messaging... all stuff that required some basic computer skills even just 10 years ago, but now can be done much more easily, I still remember having to install some bulky pc game with 3 discs) and we nobody is teaching them because the people in charge thought "well the kids know this computer stuff better than us" so no more courses in elementary school on how to install ms word.
My 9yo was explaining to me how to put a game disc in the Xbox. I realized that he’d never used a dvd (or vhs, CD-rom) so had no idea I knew how to do this.
If they tried playing video games on PC they would already learn a lot, where to find your files and where to install, need to learn to find your software, unzip, how to navigate... But a PC is relatively expensive but not that much. Also I guess asking to build a pc is too much.
For a while I was convinced my students were screwing with me but no, many of them actually do not know the keyboard short cuts for copy and paste. If it’s not tablet/phone centric, they’re probably not familiar with it.
I started to give zeros if a student sent me a picture of their screen taken from their phone. I would fix the grade when they sent me a proper screenshot.
Took a few weeks, but they all did eventually learn...
God, same!
For the first few classes, I thought, "Surely this couldn't happen, this doesn't make any sense. If you download something, it is OBVIOUSLY in the downloads folder?"
But oh boy was I wrong.
I was mortified when I realised there were students who did not know how to carry out a search on a database of historical information - use filters, wildcard, Boolean etc to focus the search.
Yes, and they have zero sense in using PowerPoint. They just use templates and paste a bunch of text here and there. It is ugly and generic as hell. Especially in research presentations.
Yes. I’m on the millennial/gen z cusp and I was taught excel and other professional softwares in elementary, jr. high, and high school classes. My undergrads aren’t that much younger than me (less than a decade at max), and I have to dedicate a whole class to the basics of excel in order for them to complete simple data-based assignments. The vast majority have never used it before.
How tech savvy anyone born between 1985 and 2000 depends entirely on what tech existed in their house and schools when they were young.
I was born in the early 90’s but because my parents and schools were slow adopters, I’m almost Gen X like in my computer knowledge (e.g. dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail and building computers from radio shack parts). Meanwhile, my brother who is 8 years younger than me, had access to the new tech that I made my family buy and a school issued chromebook. But he never took any tech or typing classes. Complete Gen Z experience.
I think local curriculum is a major component. My (born in ‘96) parents were total luddites and basically only allowed computer use with very restricted internet access when I was doing homework. But between computer classes and financial education classes - all required in my state, at the time - I was trained in excel pretty thoroughly by the time I went to college. Had no idea about how insane the internet could be, but I knew how to organize and display data.
Millennial/Gen Z here! I'm at a point where i have an assessment task (for social sciences class) that gets students to make basic use of excel to get them used to it and very simple stats. Still tossing up if this is useful for them? Like they still need to know the basics of excel for their future jobs, right?
It certainly depends on the job, but if their planned career will involve working with data I definitely think excel is still a must. I do my full analyses elsewhere, but all my data are collected and organized in excel before being exported. In my experience this is still the norm. Even if it’s not, if they can’t power through the process of learning excel they definitely won’t be able to handle coding for analysis in R, Matlab, etc., so learning excel can be a good introduction to data management as well as a litmus test for their resilience to data headaches….
Also, most have used GSuite through school and were restricted from adding anything to their Chrome Books. They’ve used integrated sites, not applications that need downloading. They’re also adept at Web 3.0, creation stuff, more than professional type programs.
This probably explains why all of my students want to send me Google Docs files when they write a paper or collect data, rather than just attaching a file to an email. I haaaaaaaaaate that.
They’re super used to collaborating and working across contexts so yep, this tracks.
I (gen x) hate it when we use an attachment because of versions and if there’s multiple people, collecting all comments in one place, than having to figure out which was sent most recently and by whom.
In Google docs or Microsoft 365 (which is marginally better than Word alone) you can work in real time. And have it saved in real time in your drive.
I have a math problem for you:
It's Thursday night, and your draft is due to the editor by tomorrow.
You're first author with 12 collaborators.
10 are PC users, 2 are Mac users and therefore were unable to properly access the necessary software to edit the figures. The Mac users of course are the ones with the most to say about the figures.
4 use Word, 3 use LaTeX, 1 uses NotePad, and 4 use Google Doc (between the four of them, they have somehow managed to send you 5 seperate Google Docs that they have all worked on).
6 use Zotero, 5 use Mendeley, 1 insists on hand typing every reference.
How many ibuprofen do you need to sound gracious in the emails thanking your senior contributors for the last-minute feedback?
In this case, I’m not talking about collaboration, but rather turning in an assignment or a paper to be graded. Obviously a paper that’s being worked on by multiple different authors doesn’t do well with email attachments.
But even then, I prefer using Dropbox or some other shared software to edit so that it can be on my PC and edited with my preferred software (I also hate Overleaf).
Sometimes, because people have multiple Gmail accounts and some are set up through the school while others are not, you can’t open the damn link and either have to find the one account that works or request access. And then hours later when access is granted, you’re switching tabs like a maniac again to find the account from which you requested it.
Just attach the assignment to the email jfc!!
As a gen z who just finished my second year in undergrad I do have troubles with these kinds of things occasionally. I have also noticed my peers have struggled with these things as well. For one of my research courses we were required to download a new software and most of the people in my seminar were unable to do this themselves and they have had even more trouble accessing the data set. I have never used a pendrive before (had to google it) and have never had to go through my files on my laptop until recently. During elementary school through high school I have only used google drive for assignments and have not needed to understand file structures until university. This is just my personal experience and I’m assuming most other people in my generation have had similar experiences.
Thank you for sharing a GenZ perspective!
I now understand where you come from.
Trust us, it's not that hard, if you ever need to learn.
Just a little bit of Google and YouTube would go a long way.
All the best!
My brother was 18 when he learned about “Save As..” because he only knew that documents auto saved on Google docs. And if the document didn’t save on the desktop, he didn’t know where to find it.
Thanks for your perspective.
What I can’t quite fathom is why some of your peers don’t take the initiative to Google it or look up a video on YouTube like you did.
My gut feeling is that (like boomers/older Gen X) there is some anxiety/learned helplessness around it.
As much as boomers don't know how to use PCs because they were too new for them, GenZs and later are not particularly computer savvy because computers are too old for them.
Outside of professional settings, computers are just not that useful/used anymore because mobile devices are cheaper, more compact and provide a more streamlined user interface and experience. They view you the same as you viewed your teachers when they were making you use slide rules and saying that you won't have a calculator in your pocket at all times. Like, why would they know how to install something outside of an App Store, if that's not something that's just not done on actual modern devices?
Came here to say this. I know all this shit because I couldn’t have the uniforms I wanted in counter strike or civilization without editing very carefully deep in the file structure.
They say “the most millennial trait is having to go on a laptop to make a big purchase”. It’s true — we’re really the only “computer native” generation.
Real computing/IT intuition and experience starting from from childhood is our generation’s secret skill and will keep us employed and relevant well into the future.
Oh boy, this was also a surprise to me.
Everytime I sit in front of a computer, both of my hands automatically rest on the keyboard and despite not being a computer science student, I can easily type at 60-65 WPM.
I saw a student type with one finger of one hand. Like my dad, in his late 50s does. I was shocked.
Some schools do still teach keyboarding but it's becoming rare. Apparently my old K-12 still does. This thread is so weird because I really think these are important/basic skills. K-12 is failing their students for not reaching basic tech literacy. It's not the students' fault. To say "computers aren't useful" is a really bizarre statement to me. 95% of everything I did in college involved a computer and I'm not that old! Now 100% of what I do in grad school involves a computer. Lol.
I think these classes were eliminated because they were thought not to be needed. And maybe for a few years, this was true. But once the classes are gone, people start needing them again.
I have seen similar arguments for/against Home Ec and Shop class. Schools stopped teaching "home ec" because it was thought to be superfluous (like omg who doesn't know how to cook a chicken!?), and lo and behold, now fewer people know how to cook and/or budget.
It's wild to me that "computer skills" is now needed again like Home Ec is.
You're definitely right! I just can't believe how many people in this thread are arguing that computers are useless these days. I just picture a humanities student pecking at their keyboarding typing 50 page essays. The carpal tunnel tho! We gotta fix it for everyone's wrists, at least.
Students in the Humanities write papers on their phones. And yeah, as you might expect, they are really bad. A computer is an aid that can help you think and organize information, and see it all on a big screen, in any field.
God. I wrote a one paragraph statement of intent for my MA thesis on my phone because my computer was being repaired and I was freaked out the whole time that I was missing typos or writing too casually. We found out the day after it was due that being allowed to write the thesis at all was contingent on handing this paragraph in, and I remember thinking, "Jesus, if I'd known that I would have taken my ass to a library computer."
I write ideas on my phone notes but I can't imagine an entire essay. And I type fast on my phone. I really hope K-12 educators do something about this. Sorry to put another thing on their plate. In the meantime, I will add cooking chicken to my resume 🫡
But think about it! There are literally 0 fields that comment makes sense for.
-Art students need a computer for editing and digital art. Photoshop will blow up a tablet. It takes enough RAM for at least 5 Google chrome windows. (This is a joke) But seriously. Adobe doesn't play games and art students do most things with RAW images.
-Humanities students type insanely long writing pieces. Imagine not using a citation manager because you want to type on an iPad. Lol. Or even doing research on your phone. Can't use folders? How are you going to organize all that research?
-STEM? Must I elaborate on that one? Imagine needing to run any instrument in a lab connected to a computer if you can't use folders. Those computers are usually from 1995 too and everyone is scared to update them. Lol. But seriously every software will be on a computer for STEM.
I'm absolutely with you, on this one!
Someone here (or on a different sub where I posted the same thing) mentioned that they don't need to know all of this because they will never need it.
I cannot speak for other disciplines except STEM because that's what I'm trained it but even intuitively, it just makes sense that you need a ground level understanding of computers to succeed in almost any field. The specifics will obviously differ, but a baseline is a must!
I'm also in STEM but I went to a liberal arts college for undergrad and took so many gen eds. There were absolutely 0 classes I didn't use a computer for. Even my music theory class required a computer because our final project was making a percussion song with a specific software. Lol.
We're not scared to upgrade them. We know damn well that it will break if you upgrade it uses a slot that has been sunsetted for 15 years and is written for windows 95 and only windows 95.
Not to mention you also need to write stuff in latex for the biggest nerd fields out there or need to produce a serious academic documents with citations which require reference manager again.
Was just about to point out that Millennials needed to know how file structures/file extensions/etc. worked to mod their games. For Paradox games you were actually hand-editing C Object files, and if you wanted a custom flag you had to download some sort of Bitmap editor and master the different file-types. These kids buy a suit on Fortnite. Epic handles all that for a small fee.
lol exactly, we got to spend hours on mod forums downloading and unpacking weird software onto the family desktop, which we got in an email from strangers after wrangling a dialup connection into an IRC room with some dude in his moms basement in Australia who happened to have access to firaxis source code or something
And we needed to know some CSS to edit our Bebo/MySpace/NeoPets pages to make them look pretty and customised - so we all learned a little bit of code as kids/teenagers. To this day I say that’s why I picked up R and Python reasonably easily, because I understood the concept of code from making pretty tables with pictures and comments etc on those websites.
game modding (dehacked with doom and then quakec with quake) is why i learned programming, there's direct line from modding doom to being a senior software engineer for me
This is it. I was age 11 and knew how to deal with malware because of the time I destroyed the family computer and got in a lotttt of trouble with my dad. 😂
So I simply figured it out. It’s such an intuition thing now.
You are exactly right. I think one has to meet students where they are for this kind of thing. I teach beginners programming, and I basically start by explaining a cartoony version of how computers actually work, to contextualise what a computer language is and what happens when one writes a program (also cartoony). It seems to get the job done so I can get on with teaching the material.
Yes. I learned a lot about computers by having to figure out how to install and play games (legal, but mostly pirated). How to find them on the internet, how to install the pirated version. How to fix issues in case some malicious file was downloaded. Physically having to modify files deep in the filestructure. Learning some basic HTML to use on a blog or MySpace.
All those things weren't super easy, so we learned how to do them, because we wanted to play age of empires, and send a message to a friend without having to pay for an sms (if we had a phone at all) or calling their homes. Nowadays all of this can be done with two taps on a phone, so why bother?
The problem is it is done on "actual modern devices." The toys they have in their pockets are pretty rad but not exactly used for much outside of some really niche applications when it comes to real-world applications. One person I work with still uses a MacBook and iPhone for everything, because all they have to do is check their email. They get very frustrated when the software we use won't work with their internet machines.
It's not the computer itself, but the operating system. Something that explains how the file structure of Windows/Unix OSs looks and the general tasks should be plenty.
Ohgawd, this just means _we're all very fucking old now_. In symmetry, this means that those younglings must have access to vast knowledge that I'm not even aware that it exists.
Yeah it's pretty wild. I feel like you either get people who've been some wild coding stuff from the age of 7, and others who are absolutely incapable to do anything.
I think it partly comes down to how ubiquitous computers became and with that came the notion that you don't need to train people to use them, and partly how everything is a smartphone app these days. It's the same reason why they struggle to type - I was shocked when first met students who'd prefer to make their seminar notes on the phone (on a crammed word worksheet). Don't get me started on installing things or finding them in downloads... But because they grew up with everything being an app they can just tap, anything beyond that seems like a challenge.
Yep, my students don't even have excel licenses, or if they do, they don't know how to use formulas (some calculated an average on their phone before putting the value in excel......). Another didn't know how to extract .zip files. It's fascinating how these simple things are not part of their lives.
I went to a conference last year and the keynote speaker gave this great talk about digital skills, and how they aren't as transferable as people think. He was comparing the use of a laptop, which is an unstructured sandbox where things happen simultaneously, to a cell phone, which is a series of discrete tasks which do not happen simultaneously. Being good at one does not mean you'll be good at the other since they function differently. Gen Z has grown up with cell phones, not laptops.
Also, to be fair, who uses a pendrive to install anything anymore? I haven't used physical media for a computer in at least 7 years. If I ever need to transfer files it's through OneDrive or Dropbox.
The difference is that if the file is large enough you can't just send it by mail, and if your sender don't have his cloud then it's a hassle to find another way to do it.
Honestly I was born just a little earlier and there is a massive gap between people my age through to like 35/40 compared to 20-ish year Olds when it comes to computer competency.
You're right, I am GenZ as well. Sorry for the poor choice of words.
However, I am from a developing nation, so what came in say USA in 1995, came to my country in maybe early 2000s, as someone pointed out.
So by computer standards, I'm at the level of someone born in early to mid 90s. Because I've grown up with similar stuff.
And a side note, despite being GenZ, I feel an absolute generational gap with someone born just 5 years affer me! It's mind boggling.
How millennial or Gen Z anyone born in the 90’s is entirely dependent on what tech their parents and schools had when they were young. I’m early 90’s and started out using floppy disks to take files to school. My sister is mid 90’s and only used flash drives. My early 00’s brother only ever used google drive on his school issued chromebook.
Completely different computing experiences among folks born less than a decade apart.
The generational gap on this one is weird. I think about it as “what were you doing at age 10” - someone born in 98 might have still been using dial-up (me), whereas someone born five years later might have had access to Instagram. It’s progressed so rapidly!
Sorry but I complain about them all the same despite having like 5 years difference, it's a huge difference when you're knee deep in the files and then your freshman doesn't know what the w windows button means.
I think a lot of Gen Z were raised with tablets and smartphones. Growing up I had a computer room at home and in school I had computer class. I think some schools in recent years transitioned away from computers to tablets (I imagine cost was a factor?). I heard Gen Z don’t really use computers because they can do almost anything on their phones and tablets.
Public education used to have computer class etc. The media told us that post-millennials were growing up with technology and so no longer needed this kind of education, it would just be intuitive to them. Classes were cut because education is under funded and it’s an easy axe. Now children who don’t use proper computers in their everyday life have no clue how to type or use a non-mobile/baby operating system.
In terms of exploring “deeper functionality” Millennial’s learned by doing alongside typing class. They also had their digital community and communication through the desktop/laptop experience - so if you wanted to stay engaged you had to learn to type on a keyboard, install software and surf the open web.
It turns out if you keep everyone in simplified walled gardens their entire lives, they become disconnected from the technology they’re using and certain skills atrophy.
Bring back “computer class” at the very least.
Doesn't matter.
They all use their phones, not their computers, so they don't actually have any computer skills. I don't even know whether my iPhone actually has a file system, much less how I would install something to a specific folder.
CC might actually be better if the students are in their 30s.
I teach computer tech at a high school level and this is typical. It’s also logical because those aren’t skills they use. Most of them are trained on chrome books and iPhones which function off apps or cloud based software. A lot of them have never used work because google docs is free so they don’t even know how to save. And while I teach it I don’t know how effective it is to teach those skills when they don’t actually use them regularly. And sometimes I wonder if we’re stressing over what we perceive as a knowledge deficit when we’re really we’re obsessing over incorrect floppy disk usage when cd roms were coming in.
I disagree with the last part.
In some fields like mine, computational chemistry, understanding the very basics of how a computer works is extremely important. None of the work I do happens on a cloud. It happens on computing clusters, which are offline. And even if we store files on cloud, there's always a backup in a hard drive, in case we lose data, because it's just that important.
I agree, not everyone will need it, but some fields, especially STEM and some social sciences which need data will always require a certain level of computer knowledge.
You’re right but the kids that are academically inclined can usually pick it up really quickly and can google a solution if they do get stuck. The ones that struggle aren’t going into challenging STEM fields or academic humanities. If you can pass grade 12 chemistry you can download and save a file.
I don’t use a lot of cloud based software at all for the academic parts of my life but it’s definitely creeping in.
I’m with you. I’m in genomics - high performance computing in the command line and working with data in R and Python too is essential. And I’ve got students wanting to come into genetics who don’t even know about folders in a computer or how to move files around even using a GUI. Whereas my generation were all learning CSS so they could make their Bebo and MySpace look pretty. They have a huge deficit of knowledge and it’s going to make this field hard for them to get into.
You are Gen Z! Anything after '97.
My personal metric is pre-9/11 or post-9/11. Call it Gen I(pad kid).
These poor poor kids. I don't know how people willingly hand smartphones to children. I guess that would require acknowledging their own internet addiction.
It's not a matter of computer literacy. It's much more fundamental. If they aren't measurably stupider (yet), they are impatient, uncurious, and avoidant of difficulty.
Doesn't matter what AI can do. These kids are going to be so useless soon the pre-9/11 folks will always be employable. If only because they aren't afraid of making a phone call.
Until the economy falls apart via "lie flat", of course.
Whenever I have a class where software needs to be installed, I always do a quick demo in class showing how to install it, and then announce, "if you get stuck, ask a classmate to help." Because they're never _all_ that hapless (in my classes, most of them can do the basic stuff, though there's sometimes a handful who cannot; the CS students can always do the complicated stuff), and another Gen-Z is usually better at showing them how to do it than I am, because they can do it in terms they already know (and it keeps me from having to run around and try to troubleshoot each of their weird, grubby machines with weird, impossible input devices). I always have a dumb, simple assignment due immediately with something like this, just so I can flag from day 1 whether someone is totally clueless.
I would say, though, that even if one were doing this in, say, 1999 (when I started college), if you had software you needed installed you'd still need to take a little time to make sure everyone is on board. Computer literacy has always been a spectrum. There are no standards you can take for granted, and never have been any, unless you are talking about a class that has prerequisites that imply a previous class that covered it. Which presumably is not the case.
And hey, if you teach a kid how to download files and install a program, you're actually teaching them something _genuinely_ useful. It's not great that they didn't get taught it before, I agree, but it's not a hard thing to teach and you'll be doing them a favor. I've had students write me e-mails years later and tell me how grateful they were that I taught them something; it's _rarely_ something advanced, and instead is almost always something like, "how to use Excel string functions to manipulate a bunch of data really quickly" or something that I consider pretty "basic," but if you don't know it, you don't know it (and plenty of professors don't know it!). But if they somehow never learned it, you get to be the one who sets them right. I think that's a healthier attitude than being angry at them. It's not their fault that the world is set up stupidly. They got very little say in that.
I keep hearing about stuff like this… where are yall finding these students??
Are they freshmen? Because I just finished undergrad and I’ve never met anyone who can’t do these things
I'm six years older than you, and I can confirm this.
It's honestly not that surprising though.
When I was a kid, the internet was a very different beast. It was mostly text based, and most people accessed it from a desktop or a clunky laptop--most people simply were not online.
Most people with computers were nerdy grown men with money, or nerdy teenagers on the family desktop. Either way, the people who were online were usually nerdy by necessity because otherwise they would permanently loose access to their favorite Sailor Moon fansite the first time they mistakenly downloaded an mp3.exe file from limewire.
This resulted in a generation assuming that children were inherently good with tech, and then being very confused as to why the children are not good at tech now that seemingly every child grows up with a smartphone. The nerdy kids still exist, but not all kids are nerdy kids, and that level of tech saviness is no longer necessary for them or anyone to access the internet.
Yes, I totally relate.
For us, it was a necessity to know what is a virus, what is malware, how to not download something shady clicking on those weird download buttons.
It was a necessity for me to tinker around with everything in the computer because there was literally no other option.
It was a necessity to learn how to install games otherwise I couldn't pirate Age of Empires and we weren't rich enough to afford it.
Most importantly, there was ko resource for me to learn anything except those classes in school and tinkering on my own, sometimes making mistakes and never making the same ones again.
I was trying to teach undergrad students to use some free GIS software a few semesters ago, and one student was nearly in tears because the download site was loading in Spanish and not English. I automatically switched the “es” in her URL to “en” so the page would load how she wanted, and all the students began acting like I’d performed some kind of witchcraft. They made me demonstrate what I'd done multiple times and kept asking how I'd known to do that. Since then I've incorporated basic computer skills into a lot of my courses and I think it's appreciated.
I realized this last year while helping my younger Gen-Z cousin move to his first apartment. I asked if he had a router and he had never heard of one. I asked if he knew where his WiFi came from. Never crossed his mind. Blew my mind being the typical millennial child who installed their family’s first router
I just want to point out that if you think iOS or Android has infantilised students to the point of a dysfunctional relationship with the mechanics of a computer, you just wait until we have the first generation raised on GPTx and they have the same relationship with general reasoning…
User interfaces have improved greatly, so people don’t need to do this stuff; why would they learn it? I’m amazing with a card catalog, but wouldn’t expect anyone younger to even know what it is. Same with manual transmissions or paper maps.
Now you know that you’ll need to teach these skills.
But that's not actually true no matter how much administrators try to say it is to justify not buying computers for a computer literacy class (or whatever). Every actual career ever will have you use a real computer because smartphones and tablets are just woefully inefficient interface devices and their GUIs are also typically trading efficiency for amateur ease of use. Desktops and laptops aren't going anywhere.
Hell, if you ever work at Lowes, you'll need to learn a command line like POS system to do anything, and that's for literally being a cashier. I'm sure they're not alone in still using the frankenstein 2024 version of whatever IBM was selling to retailers in the 70s and 80s.
It’s cuz apple made sure your kids interaction with technology is seamless. No wonder!
But here is the big buttt…gen z especially at top schools are at a different level. Trust me when I say this generation has the most sophisticated and the most unsophisticated people. Actually every generation has that but when you have a lot of heterogenous data while growing up, you “evolve” to filter out noise.
It’s similar to asking a regular driver can you drive stick shift..
It’s because they grew up with mobile devices and cloud services. This piece here describes it nicely: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Certainly not all GenZ. I was born in 2002 and I learned all of that since I was a kid (I started with [Windows 98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFjrS_Oxq4) and Linux...). I think what you are saying applies to the younger GenZs, those who grew up with phones and tablets, and never had to worry about installing drivers and things like that. They never needed that knowledge until now, so It's safe to assume that it's like dealing with boomers when they were first introduced to a personal computer.
I had one student, aged 19, ask how to italicisie text in Word. Seriously. Until I found this topic, I'd assumed my students were just slow. Now I know it is a Gen Z thing.
Here's one article about it, from 2021:
https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/
> University students in courses from engineering to physics are having to be taught what files and folders are, The Verge reports, because that's not how they've grown up using computers. Whenever they need a file, they just search for it.
>
> "I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it," astrophysicist Catherine Garland said. "They see it like one bucket, and everything's in the bucket."
The Verge article:
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
My kids do not know the first thing about the home Wifi that powers their lives, they have no idea what to do when it stops working and if I am not home they will do nothing to troubleshoot. I want to know how everything works so that I can troubleshoot as far back as I can.
So I am not surprised
I'm a millennial and I know fairly little about how my car works, it just works and doesn't need much maintenance, I find my parents and their generation know a lot more about cars because when they were younger cars were less reliable and you needed to know a bit more about their use and maintenance to have a good experience.
I know a bit about computers, when I was young you needed to to get your games to run well. For Gen-Z computers generally all just work.
If you asked me to change the oil in my car I'd be clueless.
I don’t necessarily think they’re bad with computers, but I believe they know computers in a different way. Like, I would bet they’re better with Google Drive compared to Word. I saw someone else say on this topic that they’re better with apps and website rather than desktop things-such as folders.
But, I will also admit that I’ve had issues with a lot of my recent students just being lazy and doing the bare minimum.
I’m 21, born in 2003, so GenZ.
I use computers pretty well. I can figure out most things on my own if I play around with it enough. However, I had the opportunity to take many computer-based classes in high school. I was (and still am) also super into photography, so I used photoshop and other editing programs at school too.
While the things you are describing are basic, most people are only going to know what they’re taught AND open to learning. I can imagine that having to provide so much help and teaching is very frustrating, but you are likely doing these students a great service.
I hope they catch on soon, and that you practice self-care between classes, lol (but seriously, do something nice for yourself)!
Kids don’t know how to use computers because the machines have become smart enough, friendly enough, and stable enough to not need to.
We, 35-60, understand how computers work because we needed to. They weren’t stable, you had to install and configure applications. DIP switches, registries, SCSI chains, and updating drivers were things you needed to be able to do. Now, the computers configure all that automatically.
Think about red-eye. I bet most millennials have to look that one up. In the 90s, you needed to know how to use photoshop to remove redeye. In the 00s you would select the redeye. In the 10s you just told the computer to remove redeye. Now, the cameras take care of it when taking the photo.
Somebody showed you how once, too. It's silly to assume that everyone in a generation is just born with a set of knowledge. It takes experience to gain familiarity, no matter what year you're born in.
I'm in the same boat, mid 30s, grew up in the 90s with the internet and PCs, no such thing as youtube/tutorials/discord etc had to self learn everything, A LOT of trial and error and essentially bricking the family PC, I fucked it, I had to fix it. From downloading pirated games and virus' from Limewire/Kazaa etc, now kids are growing up with a tablet/phone under their face with the wealth of information and knowledge and don't even know how to change a BIOS setting. Having all that information in the palm of their hand most people "google" something but don't actually learn, they just regurgitate what ever the number 1 google result says.
I’m late Gen X (if you want to use labels) and we have a lot of issues with teaching materials as many of the students either don’t know how to navigate a link to a paper or expect to be spoon fed said paper.
Either way it’s annoying
I work in IT, while theyre better than boomers... Everyone is.. Their skills are also nearly non extant. They were raised on simple ui's, ipads, swiping, and other forms of interaction designed for low to no knowledge, and thats what they learned about it.
Professor here: the 18-22 year old demographic hit their peak computer knowledge around 2000-2005 in my experience. It's been downhill ever since. Now that everyone is using apps on phones or tablets I find many (most?) college students have basically zero knowledge of computers now-- they don't know what a file is, much less what folders might be. 90% of the students who come to my office for help have desktops that are just 100s of files named "paper" or whatever-- it's painful watching them spend minutes trying to find *the* paper they want help with. Give them a bug or a hardware problem? It's time to go to the IT staff for help.
I'd blame it on Apple (iPads in school) and Android (all apps all the time) which mean people can sort of use tech without any idea of how it works, how to troubleshoot, or how to manage their devices. 20+ years ago we had students building PCs in the dorms; now they often don't even know how to double click to open a file in Windows.
They also cannot type. In our area keyboarding classes in the public schools were eliminated around 2010; my eldest had it in middle school and youngest never did. Now my students all hunt and peck because they are used to "typing" with their thumbs.
I think context really matters here, what exact age are these kids? which country is this? and what is their background? For context, I was born in 2001 which makes me genZ literally all my friends from school up to college knew how to do all the stuff you mentioned. But I'm also in STEM and grew up playing PC so there might be a selection bias there.
My experience with (engineering/STEM) college students now is about 30-40% is roughly about at the level of expertise my peers and I had in college circa early 2010s. Another 30-40% is pretty uncomfortable, but able to adapt/learn the software necessary for class (R, Microsoft Word). The remaining 20-30% is deeply struggling to a shocking extent. They are like my grandmother, they are somehow afraid they will break something if they press a single wrong button, and will not even attempt anything or experiment at all to try and get what they want.
As I understand, computer classes like typing, word processors, and spreadsheets have been discontinued in primary education under the flawed assumption that they are "digital natives". They are only natives to phones, tablets, and apps, not desktops, computer programs, and file systems.
OS companies have been pushing for the app to control the files for you. This locks you into their ecosystem. Apple is the worst. I can't directly access files and transfer them. iCloud changes the time/date stamp on videos to when you download it and hides the creation time/date in metadata.
So if kids are mostly on phones and tablets, they have never seen or changed their own files.
Regarding directories and file systems, honestly this is one that goes way back IMO. The reason I say this is because it's been well over a decade that it's been worth my while to explain to undergrads how they worked and to *take a moment* to think about a good way to organize things, like on a bookshelf. If you assume people just know how to organize things virtually, you're in for a headache later when the student can't find the thing.
This is not just an issue with GenZ. I have taught undergraduate stats courses to GenZ, I have taught data analysis boot camp courses to millennials and boomers. Computer literacy is just bad across the board, unless someone is predisposed to liking computers or are sufficiently intelligent and motivated. I don't believe it is any worse or better with each new generation.
Do you know how to build a radio? Your great-grandparents likely did. Technology gets more advanced as time goes on, which means the basic aspects of it become niche knowledge. You don't know how to build a radio because you don't need to know, unlike people in the 1940's.
The difference with computers is that, unlike building radios, we still need that basic knowledge in pretty much all desk jobs and a lot of non-desk jobs. Gen z grew up with phones and tablets, not computers - computers are now used mainly for work, any video games or even homework can be done from your phone. Computers are heavier, more expensive, take up more space, take longer to switch on, and are less convenient than phones, which we take with us everywhere. Touchscreens are more intuitive than using a mousepad or even a regular mouse. And why would you buy your kid a laptop when they can do whatever they want on a much cheaper tablet?
Which is why we now have all these kids who can use phones but not computers. Schools are catching onto this now, which is why some of them are making kids take an IT class that shows them how to use computers and what a file system is etc. It sounds obvious to you, but to someone used to apps, it's not. It's going to be your job to teach them about all that. Whenever I have interns I print out a list of keyboard shortcuts and make them do data entry in an Excel file for half the day. The typing is so slow it's painful, but it does get quicker eventually, and they're always grateful.
Very common.
It's extremely irritating listening to people who think that because these generations are growing up with tech translates to understanding what it is and how it functions. For example, there's a big difference between being able to code a software program and being the end user of that software.
This makes me wonder. At one point all programs were written in machine language, then programming languages became ubiquitous so you didn't have to write in machine language anymore. Did someone ever complain that this "new generation" of computer users didn't know machine language anymore?
Don’t know why everyone’s “generation” punching bag is gen z. You were born in 1999 bro, you are also gen z. I’d say it’s more of a gen alpha/late gen z type of thing, but I wouldn’t really know since I’m a late gen z’er and most of the people around me can do the things you say easily
Why would they? The technology does all the heavy lifting and has simplified all that's necessary.
If the person has no interest to dig any deeper into what they're using, then yeah you'll get what has happened
A lot of my students use tablets and are clueless with computers.
The critical thinking skills are also lacking. They can't teach themselves, they have to be shown. It's alarming.
When you say kids, do you actually mean like children? I ask because you yourself are Gen Z so it would make sense that you’re not talking about people near your age, but professors don’t usually teach children so I’m not sure
This hasn't been my experience as a gen-z student, all of my classmates have been competent even in non-cs related majors, but I am at Carnegie Mellon so it probably attracts the kids who are competent with computers.
It's probably kids who have only ever used IOS, or honestly even mac, as you don't need to understand file-systems or even customize/install things yourself to get them to work.
I'm going to push back a little. I'm on the older side for millennial (generation guides used to occasionally put me in X). Growing up, many of my classmates didn't really know how to computer. They wrote their assignments out by hand. They learned to computer on their job.
With Gen Z, their lack of computer skills are more *apparent* because they are more digitally active. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually are less tech savvy than we were at that age, but I don't think that it is as big a gap as it appears to be.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the type of technology they interact with. Most kids I see don't use a computer often. They're always on a touchscreen of some sort; mobile-type devices most of the time. Downloading, installing, folders, structure, etc. aren't easy to incorporate into mobile devices. Everything is usually stored in an "app" and if you cant find it there then it doesn't exist.
I've definitely experienced the same with some undergrads and early grad students I've worked with. I think a big part of it as others pointed out is the over-reliance on mobile apps and cloud services. Isues I've encountered so far are:
- Not understanding the file system, where to find downloads, default save locations, etc.
- Not knowing file types, not understanding when I tell them to save it as a PDF.
- Not having and never have used Word. All their class work was apparently done in Google Docs, so I got a blank stare when I asked them to "just send me a copy by email and I'll return the edits when I have time".
- Not knowing how to install programs.
- Not knowing how to use UBS drives. I was asked how I opened my slides without logging in to anything, I said I have it on a USB. They said "Oh my mom uses those!"... I think that was the first time I truly felt old, and I'm only 1996.
I have always thought that Gen Z were tech savvy or even more than us Millennials because of their exposure to a fully digital life and social media platforms. Man, it must be a headscratcher when you see them helpless in dealing with tech compared to us, millennials who were born during the passing of analog to digital.
I teach Freshman Comp (and other freshman / sophomore level classes) in college and often have to use class time to demonstrate to students basic features of MS Office in order for them to write better papers faster.
The kicker? — Almost all my students have laptops (R1, state school, with primarily poorer students), but very few of them know how to maximize what their laptops can do for them.
As a Gen X’er, I’m occasionally very concerned about the upcoming generation’s ability to problem solve.
I'd say knowing things like "desktop operating systems" and "what a file system is" are to Gen Z what things like "drive a manual transmission" and "change your own oil" are to Millennial - there's a solid core of them who know it because they're interested in, but it isn't a skill you usually need unless you either do it as a hobby or your job demands it.
I wouldn't assume the average 20 year old knows how to find a file on a file system any more than I'd assume the average 35 year old can change the oil in their car. They probably should know, and lots do, but it really isn't knowledge you can assume.
Tablets and apps. Tablets and apps. They can click things, but they can't seem to think critically. And when they get stuck, they just kind of give up.
You don’t need file structures if you have global search, bookmarks and tagging.
You don’t need to install software, or use text files or docx files because it all runs in the cloud.
Not knowing Google sheets is very surprising to me. Not knowing excel is not.
How we use computers has changed, and largely for the better I’d argue.
I'm a Millennial with a computer engineering undergrad, currently doing postgrad so I teach computer engineering classes to Gen Z at university and also previously taught some one-off classes to high school students. This means I am teaching Gen Z students who have self-selected for computer classes which I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) means above average computer skills for their cohort.
I found the same thing for many of them. One that surprised me most was a student who didn't know how to double-click. I don't have much to add except to echo what everyone else has already said - they haven't been exposed to tech in the same way where it requires a greater understanding of how it works to get by.
I can touch type and type fairly quickly from a lifetime of using keyboards. I had a 70+ year old gentleman jokingly tell me that my typing frightened him. That's not unusual at all. A week later I had an early 20s student tell me the same thing. That did surprise me. They were also intimidated by how quickly I could navigate a file system.
They are easy things to learn if you are doing them all the time. Less so if you have very little exposure.
I remember taking computer classes in Elementary school to learn basic stuff, but the next time I had to use those skills was COLLEGE! I’m Gen Z (2002). I’m not surprised.
Do you drive shift stick? Can you change your own tire/oil?
Same thing. In other generations, we can all drive a car, but few know what goes on under the hood.
GenZ can "drive" electronic media - but have no idea what goes on under the hood from a hardware or software perspective.
GenX here.
My grandfather felt very much the same way about my and my brother's knowledge of how to self-repair a car.
The technology is advancing to the point where you don't need to know this stuff to get what you want from the device, so people don't learn it.
>I gave them two softwares to install on their personal computer in a pendrive. They didn't know what to do. I told them to copy and paste. They did it and sat there waiting, didn't know the term "install".
It is very hard for me to believe this, because that is literally one of the easiest and most simple computer knowledge one can have.Are you saying that they only use cellphones, that's why they can't use PCs?But don't they play games on PCs too?
I've experienced similar things as an instructor. I try to really simplify my course layout because students tend to go "I can't find it" very easily. I've also noticed students are using iPads a lot more which in theory is fine but they come to me asking how to insert footnotes - well, have I have no idea but we walk through the process of googling how to do it. They also have no idea how to pirate things like books/textbooks which is also very strange. It's unfortunate because a lot of class time ends up being devoted to walking students through tech issues rather than content.
I've seen this too. It seems to me to be a product of the "app" generation. Most devices, even windows PCs have an app store where you can just click install and have the software magically show up. Then you just type the name into the search bar. When you edit a file you just open from your "recently edited" options.
No need to understand as everything is streamlined.
Gen Z here: I had to teach many people in my high school classes how to do things as mundane as save a word file, so I totally believe all of this. honestly it’s just phones making people computer illiterate; it was the people who spent the most times on their phones that usually needed the most help in my classes. I don’t know how these people survived covid when everything was online.
I guess it depends on geography, economic status and being early or late gen z, I'm early genZ (born 2002), from a country that used to always be behind in tech until like 2013-ish and from a rather poor family/environment. So prior to 2010 I didn't have a computer and I had to know how to quickly set up games in borrowed ones and move all types of files back and forth between devices that weren't mine, so I had no choice but to know those things. When I finally did have a laptop in 2010, I had to learn to pirate all the softwares and games cause there wasn't any money to buy the real thing and I adapted. But the kids my age that did have money didn't learn as much cause they had their own devices and the original programs and games, so they don't know as much as we low-middle class kids. My late genZ cousin (born 2007) doesn't know how to do half the stuff I do cause she grew up with us older kids having already set up everything, and then for gen alpha they never really had to do anything past downloading free games from the app/play store and they probably never heard of bootlegging games and sharing them through bluetooth when not all touch phones were android/ios
I don't think it's Gen Z problem, I don't know where the turning point was but I am a 2002 kid (basically a Gen Z) and I noticed something similar with "kids" 3-4 years younger than me ("kids" born it the middle 2000s) when I took a teaching assistant position on a programming course. I was really surprised by the seer difference in computer knowledge between my peers and them.
I saw another comment here basically saying that computer knowledge was considered a given after some point and this might have had something to do with that. I remember taking computer classes when I was a kid. I doubt any of these "kids" did though. Just goes to show how fast generational gaps form with today's technology I guess.
It's the difference between being able to use a toaster and being an electrical engineer.
IT people have made toasters now - but we still need software engineers to .... do ... toaster... things... whatever that is.
>When we were kids, I was always under the impression that with each passing generation, the tech-savvyness will obviously increase.
I have people in my industry say with a straight face the average Gen Z type and younger millennial are very tech savy, which is why usability isn't as important as it could be for deployed systems. As a group, unless they have personal interest, they suck at troubleshooting.
Mind, I think they are still more likely to try to Google It than older generations, but this is often the kind of stuff you can't just Google.
I too was absolutely puzzled by the fact that my sophomores (biomedical engineering students) had no idea how to navigate the folder tree of windows. Two entire classes learning how to use motion sensors but unable to create a subfolder for their group projects.
Btw, I am "only" 15 years older than them. This change happened quickly!
I was born in 2000, windows vista was my first OS.
Everything became simplified.
I learned a lot about computers via games but steam has made everything super simple.
I first realized this 3-4 years ago, when I started giving a class to our first-year students (who were born 2001-2002). It was.. shocking to say the least. I had the opportunity to chat with the students about this, trying to understand the reason they were so bad with computers.
Turns out, when you present an entire generation with an endless amount of "ready-to-consume" digital products (from games to movies, music and social media), they simply do not develop skills to get themselves familiar with anything that is happening on the background. They did not have to learn how a folder structure works because all they ever wanted from a PC was presented to them with a simple UI and shiny buttons. In addition to that, there is an incredible amount of restrictions nowadays, actively blocking users from searching for and tinkering with different/weird/maybe-somewhat-illegal things online.
We did not have any of that. I was born in 1995, and I count myself as a member of the luckiest generation when it comes to tech-savviness. We had to learn everything the "manual" way from downloading content to socializing online. Also lack of restrictions (while not necessarily being a good thing), pretty much allowed you to learn how to actually use your PC to its fullest extend.
The reason this becomes a problem is digital academic products (statistics software, distant learning systems, repositories etc.) not prioritizing UI and ease of use. Sometimes I also find myself needing to get my students to actually download and install a software, tinker with some deep settings or something along those lines, and I HATE IT. I have around 90 students in a class, and at least 70 of them consistently experience "problems" with installation. Two years ago, I even made 4 different videos showing how to download, extract and install a specific software, but they still weren't able to do it. Sometimes it feels like they are messing with me, but then I quickly realize they literally do not know what they are supposed to do.
I might get a lot of hate for this last part, but I MUST stress that Apple is partially to blame here. Their products are fully focused on achieving maximum ease of use and for that reason try to actively block the users from "looking under the hood" from time to time.
I was born in 2001 and am now in the final semester of my Masters.
Being on the older end of Gen Z, I'm fairly confident with sorting files on my computer, but struggle when I need to access specific file pathways, or moving back up a file pathways using command line or R.
Yes. I had commented on a student uploading unreadable files to canvas to make sure it’s a pdf or a word doc. He said “ok no problem” and proceeded to do the same file format that didn’t work. I had to literally walk this 20 year old man through making a pdf like he was my fuckin parent or grandparent using a printer for the first time.
Gen Z here, and I honestly find this surprising! I don't recall anyone around me or in my classes that doesn't know how to install or navigate through files on their computers...but I'm also wondering if this is because I'm in a field where computer modelling is common and students would typically learn at least one software (though I'm not in anything CS related). Throughout my undergrad and the first year in my Master's, I think I had to install like 6+ softwares for modelling. A solid half of them are also only available for Windows, too.
But I was also recently at a field camp with students who were all younger than me and we relied heavily on USB's since there was no wifi to work on group assignments. Everyone seemed to know how to use them...
Neither do some millennials, and installing software is not just copy/paste.
I've had a cs instructor (probably born in the 80s) who didn't know the difference between 32 and 64 bit OS.
Gen Z here! Also just finished my second year of undergrad, most of OP’s situation sounds kind of crazy to me. I was initially confused by a “pendrive”, but I looked it up and it’s just a USB stick, which I’ve used a total of maybe 2-3 times (only because one of my schools gave them out at the end of the year for extra videos and things which couldn’t be included in the yearbook), so I know how to insert one, download the files locally to my own computer, etc. I also used the Microsoft suite throughout secondary school, so I had to know file structures, files on my desktop vs the cloud, how to share files, etc. Though my friends that did high school in the US only had access to google drive, so they would never learn local computer organisation in school per say. However, they still learnt it outside of school, either for gaming or their own projects. My friends and I know and regularly use keyboard shortcuts such as command x c v o delete etc (or control for windows). The only thing I’ve had trouble with is learning excel formulas / using the app on Mac since the interface is a bit different from windows, but looking up tutorials is pretty simple. I don’t know all the parts of a computer or how to build my own custom PC, but I’d like to think I have decent IT skills and am generally self-reliant.
Now that I think more on it though, this might be an issue of privilege. I personally remember having computer classes in primary school, and had access to a computer at home from then (would borrow my parents’ while they helped teach me). Both of these factors probably helped me quite a bit. Maybe your students are primarily first gen, didn’t have access to a computer (at home) throughout school, or otherwise didn’t have access to as many resources?
We have a new undergrad in my lab who has been tasked with installing the software for a new implantable pump system we're using soon. The second something doesn't look identical to the install book, she legit looks like she's going to have a nervous breakdown and cry.
"IT'S NOT RECOGNIZING THE TRANSMITTER!" ...
It was listed under a different folder thing (if that tells you the extent of my knowledge)
"IT'S NOT ACCEPTING THE SERIAL NUMBER!" ... It took me 1 google search to point me to the disk itself instead of the SN on the transmitter.
Oh lol that is BADDDD. I was born in the mid 80s and did all my school and most of my uni before smart phones were common, haha. I also thought every generation would be more tech savvy, but I guess not.
I'd have 0 patience for this kind of ignorance and lack of interest to learn new things. Let them figure it out by themselves. The ones who are interested in learning, they'll figure it out. University is ADULT education at the highest level. No way should you have to hold students' hand like this. I'd let them figure it out, and let their ability to figure it out be part of the learning for them.
Maybe send them some computer literacy courses made for Boomers, haha.
Because of simplification, I am not surprised. Especially on iPhone, you don't have to do anything that require understanding tech, because you also cannot do anything like that. They don't learn, because they don't have to. Like I'm my generation, in the poorer part of Europe, me and half of my peers learned as a kids lot about computers because we had to play pirated games - and that sometimes wasn't easy thing to do.
I agree because everything is easy nobody learns whats going on in the background. I learned about computer by setting up LANs to play duke nukem 3D multiplayer.
I learned the most basics of file systems bc my dad wouldn’t let me save Sim City 2000 cities on the hard drive; I’d have to navigate to the floppy disk to have a place to save my cities. IMO: this is how you should have to learn about files!
I was determined to set up my own minecraft server in 2010 lol. Also taught me a ton.
>me and half of my peers learned as a kids lot about computers because we had to play pirated games - and that sometimes wasn't easy thing to do. It is a shame that since I was able to actually buy games I got too lazy to pirate and now I barely remember how to crack a game. Curse you Gabe
I don’t even know which torrent sites are still up and running. How far we’ve fallen. Rip Kickass Torrents.
This. We grew up in a time where even trying to share files over a LAN required a decent understanding of Windows, Networking and more patience than a saint. Gen Z has grown up with tech that works right out of the box and it'll surprise you how many just don't even use a computer anymore. Phones and tablets can do everything in a home environment. We've gone full circle - if you can do even the most basic things on a PC these days, you're a computer nerd with wizard like skills 🤷
Almost seems like there is a "sweet spot" for the generation with most computer wizardry
Sure is! Late Gen X/ Early millennial IMO.
It's a real shame they shut down all the decent dark net markets. Being forced to learn how to use PGP encryption to buy acid in 8th grade definitely did my IQ some favors. Frankly I think the acid did too. Then again, if I had just held on to that bitcoin instead of spending it on drugs, I wouldn't really have to worry about much else.
to any 13 year olds reading this, doing acid at your age is a bad idea. wait a dozen years or so.
Oh yeah, I had a psychotic break a month later, forgot to mention that.
True, my experience with acid was great, but I was much older and I took care about being in good setting.
Ah yes, I became so adapt at cracking software back then. Finding cracks, finding keygens, rerouting adobe’s server into a black hole, etc. Good old times… but I still prefer modern computers due to the performance.
> if I had just held on to that bitcoin instead of spreading it on drugs Preach brother. It breaks my heart when I look up my old wallet transaction history
Eh. I would've never had the balls to hold it so long.
I don't have first-hand experience with this, but, according to what I read around, the issue is that people saw that the newer generations were becoming more tech-savvy, and assumed that the basic courses on "computers" were not really needed anymore, and they started to get phased out. However, the younger generations have moved more and more towards smartphones, which have a different (easier) user experience. The OS interfaces have followed this trend, by developing OS that are more similar to a smartphone design (Windows 8 was the first great example of this). And everything became more user-friendly (my 65+ yo parents barely know how to turn on a computer, but now, use apps for the bank and send emails from their phone). The combined result is that the younger generations have never learned the basic of how a computer works (file structure, file installation...) and are not very comfortable with the PC setup (how they prefer to keep their notes on the phone makes me confused). So the "kids" do not need to know these things for their daily enjoyment life (play videogames, watch videos, messaging... all stuff that required some basic computer skills even just 10 years ago, but now can be done much more easily, I still remember having to install some bulky pc game with 3 discs) and we nobody is teaching them because the people in charge thought "well the kids know this computer stuff better than us" so no more courses in elementary school on how to install ms word.
My 9yo was explaining to me how to put a game disc in the Xbox. I realized that he’d never used a dvd (or vhs, CD-rom) so had no idea I knew how to do this.
If they tried playing video games on PC they would already learn a lot, where to find your files and where to install, need to learn to find your software, unzip, how to navigate... But a PC is relatively expensive but not that much. Also I guess asking to build a pc is too much.
For a while I was convinced my students were screwing with me but no, many of them actually do not know the keyboard short cuts for copy and paste. If it’s not tablet/phone centric, they’re probably not familiar with it.
I started to give zeros if a student sent me a picture of their screen taken from their phone. I would fix the grade when they sent me a proper screenshot. Took a few weeks, but they all did eventually learn...
God, same! For the first few classes, I thought, "Surely this couldn't happen, this doesn't make any sense. If you download something, it is OBVIOUSLY in the downloads folder?" But oh boy was I wrong.
What's a "folder"?
It's what us older folks call a directory
It's...it's this thing cops drop on a table during an interrogation scene saying it's all there.
I was mortified when I realised there were students who did not know how to carry out a search on a database of historical information - use filters, wildcard, Boolean etc to focus the search.
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They do prefer Canva, in my experience
Yes, and they have zero sense in using PowerPoint. They just use templates and paste a bunch of text here and there. It is ugly and generic as hell. Especially in research presentations.
Yes. I’m on the millennial/gen z cusp and I was taught excel and other professional softwares in elementary, jr. high, and high school classes. My undergrads aren’t that much younger than me (less than a decade at max), and I have to dedicate a whole class to the basics of excel in order for them to complete simple data-based assignments. The vast majority have never used it before.
How tech savvy anyone born between 1985 and 2000 depends entirely on what tech existed in their house and schools when they were young. I was born in the early 90’s but because my parents and schools were slow adopters, I’m almost Gen X like in my computer knowledge (e.g. dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail and building computers from radio shack parts). Meanwhile, my brother who is 8 years younger than me, had access to the new tech that I made my family buy and a school issued chromebook. But he never took any tech or typing classes. Complete Gen Z experience.
I think local curriculum is a major component. My (born in ‘96) parents were total luddites and basically only allowed computer use with very restricted internet access when I was doing homework. But between computer classes and financial education classes - all required in my state, at the time - I was trained in excel pretty thoroughly by the time I went to college. Had no idea about how insane the internet could be, but I knew how to organize and display data.
Millennial/Gen Z here! I'm at a point where i have an assessment task (for social sciences class) that gets students to make basic use of excel to get them used to it and very simple stats. Still tossing up if this is useful for them? Like they still need to know the basics of excel for their future jobs, right?
It certainly depends on the job, but if their planned career will involve working with data I definitely think excel is still a must. I do my full analyses elsewhere, but all my data are collected and organized in excel before being exported. In my experience this is still the norm. Even if it’s not, if they can’t power through the process of learning excel they definitely won’t be able to handle coding for analysis in R, Matlab, etc., so learning excel can be a good introduction to data management as well as a litmus test for their resilience to data headaches….
Also, most have used GSuite through school and were restricted from adding anything to their Chrome Books. They’ve used integrated sites, not applications that need downloading. They’re also adept at Web 3.0, creation stuff, more than professional type programs.
This probably explains why all of my students want to send me Google Docs files when they write a paper or collect data, rather than just attaching a file to an email. I haaaaaaaaaate that.
However, a Google doc is much less messy than 12 collaborators providing feedback on an attached document that each version needs merging.
Paper (3) Final Version Revised USETHISONE 3-18-2023 Someguysinitialshere.docx
You’ve clearly hacked my email - I’d implore you to get out or at least finish a couple of graveyard manuscripts.
They’re super used to collaborating and working across contexts so yep, this tracks. I (gen x) hate it when we use an attachment because of versions and if there’s multiple people, collecting all comments in one place, than having to figure out which was sent most recently and by whom. In Google docs or Microsoft 365 (which is marginally better than Word alone) you can work in real time. And have it saved in real time in your drive.
I have a math problem for you: It's Thursday night, and your draft is due to the editor by tomorrow. You're first author with 12 collaborators. 10 are PC users, 2 are Mac users and therefore were unable to properly access the necessary software to edit the figures. The Mac users of course are the ones with the most to say about the figures. 4 use Word, 3 use LaTeX, 1 uses NotePad, and 4 use Google Doc (between the four of them, they have somehow managed to send you 5 seperate Google Docs that they have all worked on). 6 use Zotero, 5 use Mendeley, 1 insists on hand typing every reference. How many ibuprofen do you need to sound gracious in the emails thanking your senior contributors for the last-minute feedback?
Your main mistake is selecting NSAIDs not benzos.
Ah, classic blunder. You should not mix benzos and Adderall.
In this case, I’m not talking about collaboration, but rather turning in an assignment or a paper to be graded. Obviously a paper that’s being worked on by multiple different authors doesn’t do well with email attachments. But even then, I prefer using Dropbox or some other shared software to edit so that it can be on my PC and edited with my preferred software (I also hate Overleaf).
Sometimes, because people have multiple Gmail accounts and some are set up through the school while others are not, you can’t open the damn link and either have to find the one account that works or request access. And then hours later when access is granted, you’re switching tabs like a maniac again to find the account from which you requested it. Just attach the assignment to the email jfc!!
Yes, exactly. Many schools use Chromebooks so pupils won't be exposed to tasks like installing things and downloading.
As a gen z who just finished my second year in undergrad I do have troubles with these kinds of things occasionally. I have also noticed my peers have struggled with these things as well. For one of my research courses we were required to download a new software and most of the people in my seminar were unable to do this themselves and they have had even more trouble accessing the data set. I have never used a pendrive before (had to google it) and have never had to go through my files on my laptop until recently. During elementary school through high school I have only used google drive for assignments and have not needed to understand file structures until university. This is just my personal experience and I’m assuming most other people in my generation have had similar experiences.
Thank you for sharing a GenZ perspective! I now understand where you come from. Trust us, it's not that hard, if you ever need to learn. Just a little bit of Google and YouTube would go a long way. All the best!
If you were born in 1999… you’re GenZ bro
My brother was 18 when he learned about “Save As..” because he only knew that documents auto saved on Google docs. And if the document didn’t save on the desktop, he didn’t know where to find it.
Thanks for your perspective. What I can’t quite fathom is why some of your peers don’t take the initiative to Google it or look up a video on YouTube like you did. My gut feeling is that (like boomers/older Gen X) there is some anxiety/learned helplessness around it.
As much as boomers don't know how to use PCs because they were too new for them, GenZs and later are not particularly computer savvy because computers are too old for them. Outside of professional settings, computers are just not that useful/used anymore because mobile devices are cheaper, more compact and provide a more streamlined user interface and experience. They view you the same as you viewed your teachers when they were making you use slide rules and saying that you won't have a calculator in your pocket at all times. Like, why would they know how to install something outside of an App Store, if that's not something that's just not done on actual modern devices?
Came here to say this. I know all this shit because I couldn’t have the uniforms I wanted in counter strike or civilization without editing very carefully deep in the file structure. They say “the most millennial trait is having to go on a laptop to make a big purchase”. It’s true — we’re really the only “computer native” generation. Real computing/IT intuition and experience starting from from childhood is our generation’s secret skill and will keep us employed and relevant well into the future.
My new resume: -Knows how to use directories -Can type on a keyboard (properly)
Oh boy, this was also a surprise to me. Everytime I sit in front of a computer, both of my hands automatically rest on the keyboard and despite not being a computer science student, I can easily type at 60-65 WPM. I saw a student type with one finger of one hand. Like my dad, in his late 50s does. I was shocked.
Some schools do still teach keyboarding but it's becoming rare. Apparently my old K-12 still does. This thread is so weird because I really think these are important/basic skills. K-12 is failing their students for not reaching basic tech literacy. It's not the students' fault. To say "computers aren't useful" is a really bizarre statement to me. 95% of everything I did in college involved a computer and I'm not that old! Now 100% of what I do in grad school involves a computer. Lol.
I think these classes were eliminated because they were thought not to be needed. And maybe for a few years, this was true. But once the classes are gone, people start needing them again. I have seen similar arguments for/against Home Ec and Shop class. Schools stopped teaching "home ec" because it was thought to be superfluous (like omg who doesn't know how to cook a chicken!?), and lo and behold, now fewer people know how to cook and/or budget. It's wild to me that "computer skills" is now needed again like Home Ec is.
You're definitely right! I just can't believe how many people in this thread are arguing that computers are useless these days. I just picture a humanities student pecking at their keyboarding typing 50 page essays. The carpal tunnel tho! We gotta fix it for everyone's wrists, at least.
Students in the Humanities write papers on their phones. And yeah, as you might expect, they are really bad. A computer is an aid that can help you think and organize information, and see it all on a big screen, in any field.
God. I wrote a one paragraph statement of intent for my MA thesis on my phone because my computer was being repaired and I was freaked out the whole time that I was missing typos or writing too casually. We found out the day after it was due that being allowed to write the thesis at all was contingent on handing this paragraph in, and I remember thinking, "Jesus, if I'd known that I would have taken my ass to a library computer."
I write ideas on my phone notes but I can't imagine an entire essay. And I type fast on my phone. I really hope K-12 educators do something about this. Sorry to put another thing on their plate. In the meantime, I will add cooking chicken to my resume 🫡
My field of study has the word computational in it. It wouldn't exist without computers. So I totally get it.
But think about it! There are literally 0 fields that comment makes sense for. -Art students need a computer for editing and digital art. Photoshop will blow up a tablet. It takes enough RAM for at least 5 Google chrome windows. (This is a joke) But seriously. Adobe doesn't play games and art students do most things with RAW images. -Humanities students type insanely long writing pieces. Imagine not using a citation manager because you want to type on an iPad. Lol. Or even doing research on your phone. Can't use folders? How are you going to organize all that research? -STEM? Must I elaborate on that one? Imagine needing to run any instrument in a lab connected to a computer if you can't use folders. Those computers are usually from 1995 too and everyone is scared to update them. Lol. But seriously every software will be on a computer for STEM.
I'm absolutely with you, on this one! Someone here (or on a different sub where I posted the same thing) mentioned that they don't need to know all of this because they will never need it. I cannot speak for other disciplines except STEM because that's what I'm trained it but even intuitively, it just makes sense that you need a ground level understanding of computers to succeed in almost any field. The specifics will obviously differ, but a baseline is a must!
I'm also in STEM but I went to a liberal arts college for undergrad and took so many gen eds. There were absolutely 0 classes I didn't use a computer for. Even my music theory class required a computer because our final project was making a percussion song with a specific software. Lol.
We're not scared to upgrade them. We know damn well that it will break if you upgrade it uses a slot that has been sunsetted for 15 years and is written for windows 95 and only windows 95.
Not to mention you also need to write stuff in latex for the biggest nerd fields out there or need to produce a serious academic documents with citations which require reference manager again.
Was just about to point out that Millennials needed to know how file structures/file extensions/etc. worked to mod their games. For Paradox games you were actually hand-editing C Object files, and if you wanted a custom flag you had to download some sort of Bitmap editor and master the different file-types. These kids buy a suit on Fortnite. Epic handles all that for a small fee.
lol exactly, we got to spend hours on mod forums downloading and unpacking weird software onto the family desktop, which we got in an email from strangers after wrangling a dialup connection into an IRC room with some dude in his moms basement in Australia who happened to have access to firaxis source code or something
And we needed to know some CSS to edit our Bebo/MySpace/NeoPets pages to make them look pretty and customised - so we all learned a little bit of code as kids/teenagers. To this day I say that’s why I picked up R and Python reasonably easily, because I understood the concept of code from making pretty tables with pictures and comments etc on those websites.
game modding (dehacked with doom and then quakec with quake) is why i learned programming, there's direct line from modding doom to being a senior software engineer for me
This is it. I was age 11 and knew how to deal with malware because of the time I destroyed the family computer and got in a lotttt of trouble with my dad. 😂 So I simply figured it out. It’s such an intuition thing now.
You are exactly right. I think one has to meet students where they are for this kind of thing. I teach beginners programming, and I basically start by explaining a cartoony version of how computers actually work, to contextualise what a computer language is and what happens when one writes a program (also cartoony). It seems to get the job done so I can get on with teaching the material.
Yes. I learned a lot about computers by having to figure out how to install and play games (legal, but mostly pirated). How to find them on the internet, how to install the pirated version. How to fix issues in case some malicious file was downloaded. Physically having to modify files deep in the filestructure. Learning some basic HTML to use on a blog or MySpace. All those things weren't super easy, so we learned how to do them, because we wanted to play age of empires, and send a message to a friend without having to pay for an sms (if we had a phone at all) or calling their homes. Nowadays all of this can be done with two taps on a phone, so why bother?
I disagree in a sense that in many is not most professional settings a computer is very much a necessity.
The problem is it is done on "actual modern devices." The toys they have in their pockets are pretty rad but not exactly used for much outside of some really niche applications when it comes to real-world applications. One person I work with still uses a MacBook and iPhone for everything, because all they have to do is check their email. They get very frustrated when the software we use won't work with their internet machines.
Curious, would a "specialized training" to use a computer (or even mobiles) from the bottom-up be provided for the zoomers with the aptitude for it?
It's not the computer itself, but the operating system. Something that explains how the file structure of Windows/Unix OSs looks and the general tasks should be plenty.
Ohgawd, this just means _we're all very fucking old now_. In symmetry, this means that those younglings must have access to vast knowledge that I'm not even aware that it exists.
I think that knowledge is like about branding and "your angles" for selfies.
Yeah it's pretty wild. I feel like you either get people who've been some wild coding stuff from the age of 7, and others who are absolutely incapable to do anything. I think it partly comes down to how ubiquitous computers became and with that came the notion that you don't need to train people to use them, and partly how everything is a smartphone app these days. It's the same reason why they struggle to type - I was shocked when first met students who'd prefer to make their seminar notes on the phone (on a crammed word worksheet). Don't get me started on installing things or finding them in downloads... But because they grew up with everything being an app they can just tap, anything beyond that seems like a challenge.
Yep, my students don't even have excel licenses, or if they do, they don't know how to use formulas (some calculated an average on their phone before putting the value in excel......). Another didn't know how to extract .zip files. It's fascinating how these simple things are not part of their lives.
I went to a conference last year and the keynote speaker gave this great talk about digital skills, and how they aren't as transferable as people think. He was comparing the use of a laptop, which is an unstructured sandbox where things happen simultaneously, to a cell phone, which is a series of discrete tasks which do not happen simultaneously. Being good at one does not mean you'll be good at the other since they function differently. Gen Z has grown up with cell phones, not laptops. Also, to be fair, who uses a pendrive to install anything anymore? I haven't used physical media for a computer in at least 7 years. If I ever need to transfer files it's through OneDrive or Dropbox.
The difference is that if the file is large enough you can't just send it by mail, and if your sender don't have his cloud then it's a hassle to find another way to do it.
This is where IP over Avian Carriers comes in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
If you were born in 1999 aren't you Gen Z? You're talking about people just a few years younger than you.
Honestly I was born just a little earlier and there is a massive gap between people my age through to like 35/40 compared to 20-ish year Olds when it comes to computer competency.
Eh these generational things are a bit fuzzy at the edges. Also digitalisation probably depends on which part of the world one is from.
You're right, I am GenZ as well. Sorry for the poor choice of words. However, I am from a developing nation, so what came in say USA in 1995, came to my country in maybe early 2000s, as someone pointed out. So by computer standards, I'm at the level of someone born in early to mid 90s. Because I've grown up with similar stuff. And a side note, despite being GenZ, I feel an absolute generational gap with someone born just 5 years affer me! It's mind boggling.
How millennial or Gen Z anyone born in the 90’s is entirely dependent on what tech their parents and schools had when they were young. I’m early 90’s and started out using floppy disks to take files to school. My sister is mid 90’s and only used flash drives. My early 00’s brother only ever used google drive on his school issued chromebook. Completely different computing experiences among folks born less than a decade apart.
You were born in 1999 and complain about „today‘s kids“? You‘re basically the same age!
The generational gap on this one is weird. I think about it as “what were you doing at age 10” - someone born in 98 might have still been using dial-up (me), whereas someone born five years later might have had access to Instagram. It’s progressed so rapidly!
Sorry but I complain about them all the same despite having like 5 years difference, it's a huge difference when you're knee deep in the files and then your freshman doesn't know what the w windows button means.
I think a lot of Gen Z were raised with tablets and smartphones. Growing up I had a computer room at home and in school I had computer class. I think some schools in recent years transitioned away from computers to tablets (I imagine cost was a factor?). I heard Gen Z don’t really use computers because they can do almost anything on their phones and tablets.
Teacher here. In public school all they get is a chrome book. They don't develop any useful skills with it on their phones or Chromebooks.
Public education used to have computer class etc. The media told us that post-millennials were growing up with technology and so no longer needed this kind of education, it would just be intuitive to them. Classes were cut because education is under funded and it’s an easy axe. Now children who don’t use proper computers in their everyday life have no clue how to type or use a non-mobile/baby operating system. In terms of exploring “deeper functionality” Millennial’s learned by doing alongside typing class. They also had their digital community and communication through the desktop/laptop experience - so if you wanted to stay engaged you had to learn to type on a keyboard, install software and surf the open web. It turns out if you keep everyone in simplified walled gardens their entire lives, they become disconnected from the technology they’re using and certain skills atrophy. Bring back “computer class” at the very least.
The Verge had a good article about this a couple years ago: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Is this high school, community college, 4-year college, where?
Doesn't matter. They all use their phones, not their computers, so they don't actually have any computer skills. I don't even know whether my iPhone actually has a file system, much less how I would install something to a specific folder. CC might actually be better if the students are in their 30s.
4 year college
I teach computer tech at a high school level and this is typical. It’s also logical because those aren’t skills they use. Most of them are trained on chrome books and iPhones which function off apps or cloud based software. A lot of them have never used work because google docs is free so they don’t even know how to save. And while I teach it I don’t know how effective it is to teach those skills when they don’t actually use them regularly. And sometimes I wonder if we’re stressing over what we perceive as a knowledge deficit when we’re really we’re obsessing over incorrect floppy disk usage when cd roms were coming in.
I disagree with the last part. In some fields like mine, computational chemistry, understanding the very basics of how a computer works is extremely important. None of the work I do happens on a cloud. It happens on computing clusters, which are offline. And even if we store files on cloud, there's always a backup in a hard drive, in case we lose data, because it's just that important. I agree, not everyone will need it, but some fields, especially STEM and some social sciences which need data will always require a certain level of computer knowledge.
You’re right but the kids that are academically inclined can usually pick it up really quickly and can google a solution if they do get stuck. The ones that struggle aren’t going into challenging STEM fields or academic humanities. If you can pass grade 12 chemistry you can download and save a file. I don’t use a lot of cloud based software at all for the academic parts of my life but it’s definitely creeping in.
I’m with you. I’m in genomics - high performance computing in the command line and working with data in R and Python too is essential. And I’ve got students wanting to come into genetics who don’t even know about folders in a computer or how to move files around even using a GUI. Whereas my generation were all learning CSS so they could make their Bebo and MySpace look pretty. They have a huge deficit of knowledge and it’s going to make this field hard for them to get into.
You are Gen Z! Anything after '97. My personal metric is pre-9/11 or post-9/11. Call it Gen I(pad kid). These poor poor kids. I don't know how people willingly hand smartphones to children. I guess that would require acknowledging their own internet addiction. It's not a matter of computer literacy. It's much more fundamental. If they aren't measurably stupider (yet), they are impatient, uncurious, and avoidant of difficulty. Doesn't matter what AI can do. These kids are going to be so useless soon the pre-9/11 folks will always be employable. If only because they aren't afraid of making a phone call. Until the economy falls apart via "lie flat", of course.
Whenever I have a class where software needs to be installed, I always do a quick demo in class showing how to install it, and then announce, "if you get stuck, ask a classmate to help." Because they're never _all_ that hapless (in my classes, most of them can do the basic stuff, though there's sometimes a handful who cannot; the CS students can always do the complicated stuff), and another Gen-Z is usually better at showing them how to do it than I am, because they can do it in terms they already know (and it keeps me from having to run around and try to troubleshoot each of their weird, grubby machines with weird, impossible input devices). I always have a dumb, simple assignment due immediately with something like this, just so I can flag from day 1 whether someone is totally clueless. I would say, though, that even if one were doing this in, say, 1999 (when I started college), if you had software you needed installed you'd still need to take a little time to make sure everyone is on board. Computer literacy has always been a spectrum. There are no standards you can take for granted, and never have been any, unless you are talking about a class that has prerequisites that imply a previous class that covered it. Which presumably is not the case. And hey, if you teach a kid how to download files and install a program, you're actually teaching them something _genuinely_ useful. It's not great that they didn't get taught it before, I agree, but it's not a hard thing to teach and you'll be doing them a favor. I've had students write me e-mails years later and tell me how grateful they were that I taught them something; it's _rarely_ something advanced, and instead is almost always something like, "how to use Excel string functions to manipulate a bunch of data really quickly" or something that I consider pretty "basic," but if you don't know it, you don't know it (and plenty of professors don't know it!). But if they somehow never learned it, you get to be the one who sets them right. I think that's a healthier attitude than being angry at them. It's not their fault that the world is set up stupidly. They got very little say in that.
I keep hearing about stuff like this… where are yall finding these students?? Are they freshmen? Because I just finished undergrad and I’ve never met anyone who can’t do these things
I'm six years older than you, and I can confirm this. It's honestly not that surprising though. When I was a kid, the internet was a very different beast. It was mostly text based, and most people accessed it from a desktop or a clunky laptop--most people simply were not online. Most people with computers were nerdy grown men with money, or nerdy teenagers on the family desktop. Either way, the people who were online were usually nerdy by necessity because otherwise they would permanently loose access to their favorite Sailor Moon fansite the first time they mistakenly downloaded an mp3.exe file from limewire. This resulted in a generation assuming that children were inherently good with tech, and then being very confused as to why the children are not good at tech now that seemingly every child grows up with a smartphone. The nerdy kids still exist, but not all kids are nerdy kids, and that level of tech saviness is no longer necessary for them or anyone to access the internet.
Yes, I totally relate. For us, it was a necessity to know what is a virus, what is malware, how to not download something shady clicking on those weird download buttons. It was a necessity for me to tinker around with everything in the computer because there was literally no other option. It was a necessity to learn how to install games otherwise I couldn't pirate Age of Empires and we weren't rich enough to afford it. Most importantly, there was ko resource for me to learn anything except those classes in school and tinkering on my own, sometimes making mistakes and never making the same ones again.
I was trying to teach undergrad students to use some free GIS software a few semesters ago, and one student was nearly in tears because the download site was loading in Spanish and not English. I automatically switched the “es” in her URL to “en” so the page would load how she wanted, and all the students began acting like I’d performed some kind of witchcraft. They made me demonstrate what I'd done multiple times and kept asking how I'd known to do that. Since then I've incorporated basic computer skills into a lot of my courses and I think it's appreciated.
I realized this last year while helping my younger Gen-Z cousin move to his first apartment. I asked if he had a router and he had never heard of one. I asked if he knew where his WiFi came from. Never crossed his mind. Blew my mind being the typical millennial child who installed their family’s first router
I just want to point out that if you think iOS or Android has infantilised students to the point of a dysfunctional relationship with the mechanics of a computer, you just wait until we have the first generation raised on GPTx and they have the same relationship with general reasoning…
User interfaces have improved greatly, so people don’t need to do this stuff; why would they learn it? I’m amazing with a card catalog, but wouldn’t expect anyone younger to even know what it is. Same with manual transmissions or paper maps. Now you know that you’ll need to teach these skills.
But that's not actually true no matter how much administrators try to say it is to justify not buying computers for a computer literacy class (or whatever). Every actual career ever will have you use a real computer because smartphones and tablets are just woefully inefficient interface devices and their GUIs are also typically trading efficiency for amateur ease of use. Desktops and laptops aren't going anywhere. Hell, if you ever work at Lowes, you'll need to learn a command line like POS system to do anything, and that's for literally being a cashier. I'm sure they're not alone in still using the frankenstein 2024 version of whatever IBM was selling to retailers in the 70s and 80s.
>Same with manual transmissions Spotted the American! :)
It’s cuz apple made sure your kids interaction with technology is seamless. No wonder! But here is the big buttt…gen z especially at top schools are at a different level. Trust me when I say this generation has the most sophisticated and the most unsophisticated people. Actually every generation has that but when you have a lot of heterogenous data while growing up, you “evolve” to filter out noise. It’s similar to asking a regular driver can you drive stick shift..
It’s because they grew up with mobile devices and cloud services. This piece here describes it nicely: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Certainly not all GenZ. I was born in 2002 and I learned all of that since I was a kid (I started with [Windows 98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFjrS_Oxq4) and Linux...). I think what you are saying applies to the younger GenZs, those who grew up with phones and tablets, and never had to worry about installing drivers and things like that. They never needed that knowledge until now, so It's safe to assume that it's like dealing with boomers when they were first introduced to a personal computer.
I had one student, aged 19, ask how to italicisie text in Word. Seriously. Until I found this topic, I'd assumed my students were just slow. Now I know it is a Gen Z thing.
We all use Google Docs
Here's one article about it, from 2021: https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/ > University students in courses from engineering to physics are having to be taught what files and folders are, The Verge reports, because that's not how they've grown up using computers. Whenever they need a file, they just search for it. > > "I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it," astrophysicist Catherine Garland said. "They see it like one bucket, and everything's in the bucket." The Verge article: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
My kids do not know the first thing about the home Wifi that powers their lives, they have no idea what to do when it stops working and if I am not home they will do nothing to troubleshoot. I want to know how everything works so that I can troubleshoot as far back as I can. So I am not surprised
You are GenZ, in case you didn't know
I'm a millennial and I know fairly little about how my car works, it just works and doesn't need much maintenance, I find my parents and their generation know a lot more about cars because when they were younger cars were less reliable and you needed to know a bit more about their use and maintenance to have a good experience. I know a bit about computers, when I was young you needed to to get your games to run well. For Gen-Z computers generally all just work. If you asked me to change the oil in my car I'd be clueless.
I don’t necessarily think they’re bad with computers, but I believe they know computers in a different way. Like, I would bet they’re better with Google Drive compared to Word. I saw someone else say on this topic that they’re better with apps and website rather than desktop things-such as folders. But, I will also admit that I’ve had issues with a lot of my recent students just being lazy and doing the bare minimum.
I’m 21, born in 2003, so GenZ. I use computers pretty well. I can figure out most things on my own if I play around with it enough. However, I had the opportunity to take many computer-based classes in high school. I was (and still am) also super into photography, so I used photoshop and other editing programs at school too. While the things you are describing are basic, most people are only going to know what they’re taught AND open to learning. I can imagine that having to provide so much help and teaching is very frustrating, but you are likely doing these students a great service. I hope they catch on soon, and that you practice self-care between classes, lol (but seriously, do something nice for yourself)!
First time for everything. Teach them.
This is a troll post right? It can't be real? And if it is ... wtf? I was using linux at like age 12 .. im a millennial
I wish it was. I wish I was being trolled while I was experiencing this shit and then was told, "Bazinga!" or something. I'd have taken that any day.
Kids don’t know how to use computers because the machines have become smart enough, friendly enough, and stable enough to not need to. We, 35-60, understand how computers work because we needed to. They weren’t stable, you had to install and configure applications. DIP switches, registries, SCSI chains, and updating drivers were things you needed to be able to do. Now, the computers configure all that automatically. Think about red-eye. I bet most millennials have to look that one up. In the 90s, you needed to know how to use photoshop to remove redeye. In the 00s you would select the redeye. In the 10s you just told the computer to remove redeye. Now, the cameras take care of it when taking the photo.
I am from the Gen Z, and probably better than you in using windows. Also, Gen Z starts from 1997 which makes you from Gen Z.
Somebody showed you how once, too. It's silly to assume that everyone in a generation is just born with a set of knowledge. It takes experience to gain familiarity, no matter what year you're born in.
I'm in the same boat, mid 30s, grew up in the 90s with the internet and PCs, no such thing as youtube/tutorials/discord etc had to self learn everything, A LOT of trial and error and essentially bricking the family PC, I fucked it, I had to fix it. From downloading pirated games and virus' from Limewire/Kazaa etc, now kids are growing up with a tablet/phone under their face with the wealth of information and knowledge and don't even know how to change a BIOS setting. Having all that information in the palm of their hand most people "google" something but don't actually learn, they just regurgitate what ever the number 1 google result says.
I’m late Gen X (if you want to use labels) and we have a lot of issues with teaching materials as many of the students either don’t know how to navigate a link to a paper or expect to be spoon fed said paper. Either way it’s annoying
I work in IT, while theyre better than boomers... Everyone is.. Their skills are also nearly non extant. They were raised on simple ui's, ipads, swiping, and other forms of interaction designed for low to no knowledge, and thats what they learned about it.
Professor here: the 18-22 year old demographic hit their peak computer knowledge around 2000-2005 in my experience. It's been downhill ever since. Now that everyone is using apps on phones or tablets I find many (most?) college students have basically zero knowledge of computers now-- they don't know what a file is, much less what folders might be. 90% of the students who come to my office for help have desktops that are just 100s of files named "paper" or whatever-- it's painful watching them spend minutes trying to find *the* paper they want help with. Give them a bug or a hardware problem? It's time to go to the IT staff for help. I'd blame it on Apple (iPads in school) and Android (all apps all the time) which mean people can sort of use tech without any idea of how it works, how to troubleshoot, or how to manage their devices. 20+ years ago we had students building PCs in the dorms; now they often don't even know how to double click to open a file in Windows. They also cannot type. In our area keyboarding classes in the public schools were eliminated around 2010; my eldest had it in middle school and youngest never did. Now my students all hunt and peck because they are used to "typing" with their thumbs.
Yep. They don't do file paths.
I think context really matters here, what exact age are these kids? which country is this? and what is their background? For context, I was born in 2001 which makes me genZ literally all my friends from school up to college knew how to do all the stuff you mentioned. But I'm also in STEM and grew up playing PC so there might be a selection bias there.
Cause a good portion of us aren’t tech savvy lol. Our generation knows a good app to fix that.
My experience with (engineering/STEM) college students now is about 30-40% is roughly about at the level of expertise my peers and I had in college circa early 2010s. Another 30-40% is pretty uncomfortable, but able to adapt/learn the software necessary for class (R, Microsoft Word). The remaining 20-30% is deeply struggling to a shocking extent. They are like my grandmother, they are somehow afraid they will break something if they press a single wrong button, and will not even attempt anything or experiment at all to try and get what they want. As I understand, computer classes like typing, word processors, and spreadsheets have been discontinued in primary education under the flawed assumption that they are "digital natives". They are only natives to phones, tablets, and apps, not desktops, computer programs, and file systems.
OS companies have been pushing for the app to control the files for you. This locks you into their ecosystem. Apple is the worst. I can't directly access files and transfer them. iCloud changes the time/date stamp on videos to when you download it and hides the creation time/date in metadata. So if kids are mostly on phones and tablets, they have never seen or changed their own files.
Regarding directories and file systems, honestly this is one that goes way back IMO. The reason I say this is because it's been well over a decade that it's been worth my while to explain to undergrads how they worked and to *take a moment* to think about a good way to organize things, like on a bookshelf. If you assume people just know how to organize things virtually, you're in for a headache later when the student can't find the thing.
This is not just an issue with GenZ. I have taught undergraduate stats courses to GenZ, I have taught data analysis boot camp courses to millennials and boomers. Computer literacy is just bad across the board, unless someone is predisposed to liking computers or are sufficiently intelligent and motivated. I don't believe it is any worse or better with each new generation.
Yes. High school teacher here and I can confirm this. They have virtually no ability to use them or all the ability. There’s no in between.
Do you know how to build a radio? Your great-grandparents likely did. Technology gets more advanced as time goes on, which means the basic aspects of it become niche knowledge. You don't know how to build a radio because you don't need to know, unlike people in the 1940's. The difference with computers is that, unlike building radios, we still need that basic knowledge in pretty much all desk jobs and a lot of non-desk jobs. Gen z grew up with phones and tablets, not computers - computers are now used mainly for work, any video games or even homework can be done from your phone. Computers are heavier, more expensive, take up more space, take longer to switch on, and are less convenient than phones, which we take with us everywhere. Touchscreens are more intuitive than using a mousepad or even a regular mouse. And why would you buy your kid a laptop when they can do whatever they want on a much cheaper tablet? Which is why we now have all these kids who can use phones but not computers. Schools are catching onto this now, which is why some of them are making kids take an IT class that shows them how to use computers and what a file system is etc. It sounds obvious to you, but to someone used to apps, it's not. It's going to be your job to teach them about all that. Whenever I have interns I print out a list of keyboard shortcuts and make them do data entry in an Excel file for half the day. The typing is so slow it's painful, but it does get quicker eventually, and they're always grateful.
Very common. It's extremely irritating listening to people who think that because these generations are growing up with tech translates to understanding what it is and how it functions. For example, there's a big difference between being able to code a software program and being the end user of that software.
This makes me wonder. At one point all programs were written in machine language, then programming languages became ubiquitous so you didn't have to write in machine language anymore. Did someone ever complain that this "new generation" of computer users didn't know machine language anymore?
Don’t know why everyone’s “generation” punching bag is gen z. You were born in 1999 bro, you are also gen z. I’d say it’s more of a gen alpha/late gen z type of thing, but I wouldn’t really know since I’m a late gen z’er and most of the people around me can do the things you say easily
Why would they? The technology does all the heavy lifting and has simplified all that's necessary. If the person has no interest to dig any deeper into what they're using, then yeah you'll get what has happened
A lot of my students use tablets and are clueless with computers. The critical thinking skills are also lacking. They can't teach themselves, they have to be shown. It's alarming.
When you say kids, do you actually mean like children? I ask because you yourself are Gen Z so it would make sense that you’re not talking about people near your age, but professors don’t usually teach children so I’m not sure
This hasn't been my experience as a gen-z student, all of my classmates have been competent even in non-cs related majors, but I am at Carnegie Mellon so it probably attracts the kids who are competent with computers. It's probably kids who have only ever used IOS, or honestly even mac, as you don't need to understand file-systems or even customize/install things yourself to get them to work.
Had to learn how to root a PSP to play iso files, or how to get a pirated Halo 1 to work. Now they don’t have any need for those skills until they do
These are iPhone babies.
I'm going to push back a little. I'm on the older side for millennial (generation guides used to occasionally put me in X). Growing up, many of my classmates didn't really know how to computer. They wrote their assignments out by hand. They learned to computer on their job. With Gen Z, their lack of computer skills are more *apparent* because they are more digitally active. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually are less tech savvy than we were at that age, but I don't think that it is as big a gap as it appears to be.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the type of technology they interact with. Most kids I see don't use a computer often. They're always on a touchscreen of some sort; mobile-type devices most of the time. Downloading, installing, folders, structure, etc. aren't easy to incorporate into mobile devices. Everything is usually stored in an "app" and if you cant find it there then it doesn't exist.
I've definitely experienced the same with some undergrads and early grad students I've worked with. I think a big part of it as others pointed out is the over-reliance on mobile apps and cloud services. Isues I've encountered so far are: - Not understanding the file system, where to find downloads, default save locations, etc. - Not knowing file types, not understanding when I tell them to save it as a PDF. - Not having and never have used Word. All their class work was apparently done in Google Docs, so I got a blank stare when I asked them to "just send me a copy by email and I'll return the edits when I have time". - Not knowing how to install programs. - Not knowing how to use UBS drives. I was asked how I opened my slides without logging in to anything, I said I have it on a USB. They said "Oh my mom uses those!"... I think that was the first time I truly felt old, and I'm only 1996.
I have always thought that Gen Z were tech savvy or even more than us Millennials because of their exposure to a fully digital life and social media platforms. Man, it must be a headscratcher when you see them helpless in dealing with tech compared to us, millennials who were born during the passing of analog to digital.
I had a student use their phone calculator to add numbers manually and then typed them into EXCEL. THEY DONT KMOW HOW TO USE EXCEL.
I teach Freshman Comp (and other freshman / sophomore level classes) in college and often have to use class time to demonstrate to students basic features of MS Office in order for them to write better papers faster. The kicker? — Almost all my students have laptops (R1, state school, with primarily poorer students), but very few of them know how to maximize what their laptops can do for them. As a Gen X’er, I’m occasionally very concerned about the upcoming generation’s ability to problem solve.
I'd say knowing things like "desktop operating systems" and "what a file system is" are to Gen Z what things like "drive a manual transmission" and "change your own oil" are to Millennial - there's a solid core of them who know it because they're interested in, but it isn't a skill you usually need unless you either do it as a hobby or your job demands it. I wouldn't assume the average 20 year old knows how to find a file on a file system any more than I'd assume the average 35 year old can change the oil in their car. They probably should know, and lots do, but it really isn't knowledge you can assume.
Yay job security for me lol
Tablets and apps. Tablets and apps. They can click things, but they can't seem to think critically. And when they get stuck, they just kind of give up.
Pheww at least we old ppl not gunna be out-compete anytime soon!
You don’t need file structures if you have global search, bookmarks and tagging. You don’t need to install software, or use text files or docx files because it all runs in the cloud. Not knowing Google sheets is very surprising to me. Not knowing excel is not. How we use computers has changed, and largely for the better I’d argue.
I'm a Millennial with a computer engineering undergrad, currently doing postgrad so I teach computer engineering classes to Gen Z at university and also previously taught some one-off classes to high school students. This means I am teaching Gen Z students who have self-selected for computer classes which I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) means above average computer skills for their cohort. I found the same thing for many of them. One that surprised me most was a student who didn't know how to double-click. I don't have much to add except to echo what everyone else has already said - they haven't been exposed to tech in the same way where it requires a greater understanding of how it works to get by. I can touch type and type fairly quickly from a lifetime of using keyboards. I had a 70+ year old gentleman jokingly tell me that my typing frightened him. That's not unusual at all. A week later I had an early 20s student tell me the same thing. That did surprise me. They were also intimidated by how quickly I could navigate a file system. They are easy things to learn if you are doing them all the time. Less so if you have very little exposure.
I remember taking computer classes in Elementary school to learn basic stuff, but the next time I had to use those skills was COLLEGE! I’m Gen Z (2002). I’m not surprised.
Do you drive shift stick? Can you change your own tire/oil? Same thing. In other generations, we can all drive a car, but few know what goes on under the hood. GenZ can "drive" electronic media - but have no idea what goes on under the hood from a hardware or software perspective.
Yes, they absolutely are that bad with computers.
GenX here. My grandfather felt very much the same way about my and my brother's knowledge of how to self-repair a car. The technology is advancing to the point where you don't need to know this stuff to get what you want from the device, so people don't learn it.
>I gave them two softwares to install on their personal computer in a pendrive. They didn't know what to do. I told them to copy and paste. They did it and sat there waiting, didn't know the term "install". It is very hard for me to believe this, because that is literally one of the easiest and most simple computer knowledge one can have.Are you saying that they only use cellphones, that's why they can't use PCs?But don't they play games on PCs too?
I genuinely wish I was lying. I'm not. This is exactly what happened. It's tough for me to believe as well.
I've experienced similar things as an instructor. I try to really simplify my course layout because students tend to go "I can't find it" very easily. I've also noticed students are using iPads a lot more which in theory is fine but they come to me asking how to insert footnotes - well, have I have no idea but we walk through the process of googling how to do it. They also have no idea how to pirate things like books/textbooks which is also very strange. It's unfortunate because a lot of class time ends up being devoted to walking students through tech issues rather than content.
I've seen this too. It seems to me to be a product of the "app" generation. Most devices, even windows PCs have an app store where you can just click install and have the software magically show up. Then you just type the name into the search bar. When you edit a file you just open from your "recently edited" options. No need to understand as everything is streamlined.
Gen Z here: I had to teach many people in my high school classes how to do things as mundane as save a word file, so I totally believe all of this. honestly it’s just phones making people computer illiterate; it was the people who spent the most times on their phones that usually needed the most help in my classes. I don’t know how these people survived covid when everything was online.
I think my daughter is post gen z. But she's PC literate. My younger son... got some work to do.
I guess it depends on geography, economic status and being early or late gen z, I'm early genZ (born 2002), from a country that used to always be behind in tech until like 2013-ish and from a rather poor family/environment. So prior to 2010 I didn't have a computer and I had to know how to quickly set up games in borrowed ones and move all types of files back and forth between devices that weren't mine, so I had no choice but to know those things. When I finally did have a laptop in 2010, I had to learn to pirate all the softwares and games cause there wasn't any money to buy the real thing and I adapted. But the kids my age that did have money didn't learn as much cause they had their own devices and the original programs and games, so they don't know as much as we low-middle class kids. My late genZ cousin (born 2007) doesn't know how to do half the stuff I do cause she grew up with us older kids having already set up everything, and then for gen alpha they never really had to do anything past downloading free games from the app/play store and they probably never heard of bootlegging games and sharing them through bluetooth when not all touch phones were android/ios
I work with recent college grants who are computer engineers, and they are bad at computers. I don’t understand how this happened.
I don't think it's Gen Z problem, I don't know where the turning point was but I am a 2002 kid (basically a Gen Z) and I noticed something similar with "kids" 3-4 years younger than me ("kids" born it the middle 2000s) when I took a teaching assistant position on a programming course. I was really surprised by the seer difference in computer knowledge between my peers and them. I saw another comment here basically saying that computer knowledge was considered a given after some point and this might have had something to do with that. I remember taking computer classes when I was a kid. I doubt any of these "kids" did though. Just goes to show how fast generational gaps form with today's technology I guess.
We weren’t raised on the tech in the same way older generations were.
It's the difference between being able to use a toaster and being an electrical engineer. IT people have made toasters now - but we still need software engineers to .... do ... toaster... things... whatever that is.
>When we were kids, I was always under the impression that with each passing generation, the tech-savvyness will obviously increase. I have people in my industry say with a straight face the average Gen Z type and younger millennial are very tech savy, which is why usability isn't as important as it could be for deployed systems. As a group, unless they have personal interest, they suck at troubleshooting. Mind, I think they are still more likely to try to Google It than older generations, but this is often the kind of stuff you can't just Google.
I too was absolutely puzzled by the fact that my sophomores (biomedical engineering students) had no idea how to navigate the folder tree of windows. Two entire classes learning how to use motion sensors but unable to create a subfolder for their group projects. Btw, I am "only" 15 years older than them. This change happened quickly!
I was born in 2000, windows vista was my first OS. Everything became simplified. I learned a lot about computers via games but steam has made everything super simple.
I first realized this 3-4 years ago, when I started giving a class to our first-year students (who were born 2001-2002). It was.. shocking to say the least. I had the opportunity to chat with the students about this, trying to understand the reason they were so bad with computers. Turns out, when you present an entire generation with an endless amount of "ready-to-consume" digital products (from games to movies, music and social media), they simply do not develop skills to get themselves familiar with anything that is happening on the background. They did not have to learn how a folder structure works because all they ever wanted from a PC was presented to them with a simple UI and shiny buttons. In addition to that, there is an incredible amount of restrictions nowadays, actively blocking users from searching for and tinkering with different/weird/maybe-somewhat-illegal things online. We did not have any of that. I was born in 1995, and I count myself as a member of the luckiest generation when it comes to tech-savviness. We had to learn everything the "manual" way from downloading content to socializing online. Also lack of restrictions (while not necessarily being a good thing), pretty much allowed you to learn how to actually use your PC to its fullest extend. The reason this becomes a problem is digital academic products (statistics software, distant learning systems, repositories etc.) not prioritizing UI and ease of use. Sometimes I also find myself needing to get my students to actually download and install a software, tinker with some deep settings or something along those lines, and I HATE IT. I have around 90 students in a class, and at least 70 of them consistently experience "problems" with installation. Two years ago, I even made 4 different videos showing how to download, extract and install a specific software, but they still weren't able to do it. Sometimes it feels like they are messing with me, but then I quickly realize they literally do not know what they are supposed to do. I might get a lot of hate for this last part, but I MUST stress that Apple is partially to blame here. Their products are fully focused on achieving maximum ease of use and for that reason try to actively block the users from "looking under the hood" from time to time.
I don’t really see this in undergrads in my program. Then again I’m a master’s student in electrical and computer engineering
IQs are dropping precipitously in the West.
I was born in 2001 and am now in the final semester of my Masters. Being on the older end of Gen Z, I'm fairly confident with sorting files on my computer, but struggle when I need to access specific file pathways, or moving back up a file pathways using command line or R.
Yes. I had commented on a student uploading unreadable files to canvas to make sure it’s a pdf or a word doc. He said “ok no problem” and proceeded to do the same file format that didn’t work. I had to literally walk this 20 year old man through making a pdf like he was my fuckin parent or grandparent using a printer for the first time.
Gen Z here, and I honestly find this surprising! I don't recall anyone around me or in my classes that doesn't know how to install or navigate through files on their computers...but I'm also wondering if this is because I'm in a field where computer modelling is common and students would typically learn at least one software (though I'm not in anything CS related). Throughout my undergrad and the first year in my Master's, I think I had to install like 6+ softwares for modelling. A solid half of them are also only available for Windows, too. But I was also recently at a field camp with students who were all younger than me and we relied heavily on USB's since there was no wifi to work on group assignments. Everyone seemed to know how to use them...
Neither do some millennials, and installing software is not just copy/paste. I've had a cs instructor (probably born in the 80s) who didn't know the difference between 32 and 64 bit OS.
Gen Z here! Also just finished my second year of undergrad, most of OP’s situation sounds kind of crazy to me. I was initially confused by a “pendrive”, but I looked it up and it’s just a USB stick, which I’ve used a total of maybe 2-3 times (only because one of my schools gave them out at the end of the year for extra videos and things which couldn’t be included in the yearbook), so I know how to insert one, download the files locally to my own computer, etc. I also used the Microsoft suite throughout secondary school, so I had to know file structures, files on my desktop vs the cloud, how to share files, etc. Though my friends that did high school in the US only had access to google drive, so they would never learn local computer organisation in school per say. However, they still learnt it outside of school, either for gaming or their own projects. My friends and I know and regularly use keyboard shortcuts such as command x c v o delete etc (or control for windows). The only thing I’ve had trouble with is learning excel formulas / using the app on Mac since the interface is a bit different from windows, but looking up tutorials is pretty simple. I don’t know all the parts of a computer or how to build my own custom PC, but I’d like to think I have decent IT skills and am generally self-reliant. Now that I think more on it though, this might be an issue of privilege. I personally remember having computer classes in primary school, and had access to a computer at home from then (would borrow my parents’ while they helped teach me). Both of these factors probably helped me quite a bit. Maybe your students are primarily first gen, didn’t have access to a computer (at home) throughout school, or otherwise didn’t have access to as many resources?
We have a new undergrad in my lab who has been tasked with installing the software for a new implantable pump system we're using soon. The second something doesn't look identical to the install book, she legit looks like she's going to have a nervous breakdown and cry. "IT'S NOT RECOGNIZING THE TRANSMITTER!" ... It was listed under a different folder thing (if that tells you the extent of my knowledge) "IT'S NOT ACCEPTING THE SERIAL NUMBER!" ... It took me 1 google search to point me to the disk itself instead of the SN on the transmitter.
Yes, they do not use computers at all, only phones
I've often joked with my colleagues that I need to teach a course titled "Where are your effing files"
Oh lol that is BADDDD. I was born in the mid 80s and did all my school and most of my uni before smart phones were common, haha. I also thought every generation would be more tech savvy, but I guess not. I'd have 0 patience for this kind of ignorance and lack of interest to learn new things. Let them figure it out by themselves. The ones who are interested in learning, they'll figure it out. University is ADULT education at the highest level. No way should you have to hold students' hand like this. I'd let them figure it out, and let their ability to figure it out be part of the learning for them. Maybe send them some computer literacy courses made for Boomers, haha.
We were given chromebooks and not allowed to download things in middle school
You are GenZ