#folder structures and troubleshooting beyond turning it off and on again

[genuineformality]

I would argue, as someone who has worked with a lot of entry level college grads and interns over the last fifteen years, that the overall level of computer literacy of the younger generation is less than my generation (millennial - and I’m on the far older side of that one).

This is not a statement that the younger generation is in any way stupid.

It is, however, a statement that the way we interact with computers is more of a curated design experience than it was when I was growing up and in my early career. In my (entirely anecdotal) observation of a whole slew of 18-25 year olds over the last decade has been that there is overall less knowledge about how the computer box actually works, which leads to a lot of frustration when it does not work the way they think it should, and less willingness? Ability? Knowledge? to troubleshoot problems when they occur.

I have spent a lot of my professional hours training young adults in PC 101 and software and hardware troubleshooting and what I’ve found is that some people (regardless of age) are extremely good at intuitively understanding the computer box and some people just are not. And again, this isn’t a value statement: there is no judgement (except where it affects their ability to do the job effectively), but it is something I see a lot and I’m seeing it more and more as my employees and interns are getting further away from me in age.

I don’t see a lot of value in framing this as one generation being better or worse than others, but I don’t think it’s inaccurate to observe that there is a generational divide in computer education that has resulted in some kids coming into the workforce with subpar computer skills.

why is the newest tumblr thing "teenagers don't know how to use pc and interwebs all they know is app and phone" like every teenager knows how to use the internet. and the reason less and less people have pcs is the fact that pcs are expensive as hell, so people are more likely to get phone which have both internet capability and calling, instead of getting another more expensive device that only has one of those things. the only people I know who have pcs are rich people, because guess what- They're Expensive. obviously pcs aren't going the way of the dodo or anything but you have to understand that the use of less of them is not because the new generation is braindead and stupid, but because of financial reasons and technological advances. besides, why blame the children, who are most likely not the ones buying the technology?