this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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I've seen a number of polls on the age demographics on the fediverse, and they've all been pretty consistent ... the fediverse is basically on average a Xennial place with a surprising amount of Boomer. There are younger folks, of course, more so on lemmy/kbin than mastodon it seems (which is interesting).
But generally, in line with your comment, there's a generational filter here that attracts those who remember the value of and how to use the old internet and old computers.
Which, if you think there's value in what the fediverse is trying to do (free our expression and ownership on the internet), is a problem. Another way of looking at it is that the failure of allowing big-private-monopoly-social platforms to dominate for so long^1^ will have long lasting side effects including the erasure of what the internet can be in many people's understanding of the world.
[1]: I'd estimate 2008-2023 as the era of dominant big social, where the closing year of 2023 may be too early or even open ended. That's 14 years. Which, if we take the web as having started in 1993, and being ~30 years old, is about half the age of the internet. So, it's a decently objective approximation, then, to say that the web is Facebook etc, especially as the relevance of older things fades. Which only amplifies the harm we allowed to transpire.
Also ... check it out ... lemmy can do footnotes!! Click the
view sourcebutton to see how I did it if you're interested.I don't talk about age, though? As I mentioned in my post being tech illiterate is not necessarily a question of your age group.
Yes. Sorry if it seems I was distorting your message. I was just trying to draw a connection between different kinds of tech literacy and familiarity and how that might track with the demographics here and the history of mainstream tech.
Maybe a stretch, but also maybe I have a point.
No I do think you absolutely have a point!
That more young people than you would expect are missing from places like Lemmy I blame mostly on smartphones and tablets.
Over the last decades the numbers of students who own PCs/Laptops have dropped. When I first worked as a lecture assistant for computational statistics that was around 2011 almost every student had a PC or laptop and knew how to use it (to a different extent between them, of course).
The course is once a year, has about 90 students each time and, since it's about statistics, there is a mix of students from different fields. Most are from STEM fields, a few from social science or psychology. I could basically watch tech literacy deteriorate over the years.
This years course had only a third of people in it who actually use a PC/Mac outside of the course. There was not a single person who uses Linux this year. For the university's lecture platform or for online lectures they use their phone, tablet or a tablet computer which runs Android or iOS.
78 % of them did never write a line of code in their lifes, or so they say. The ones who did say they have programming experience often only had one of these "Learning to Code" Apps on their phones.
Most of them need extensive instruction and hand holding to install the programs we use (which is R and RStudio). You do not want to imagine how it is to teach these students basic coding in R. It is both my biggest joy and my biggest sorrow. The stories I could tell....
I highly doubt many of these students would find their way to the Fediverse. They do not think about privacy or freedom online because they are disconnected from the online world, in a way. They are simply consumers who do not feel as a part of it.
Reminds me of one time I was running a course in how to user git for uni students. Setting people up at the beginning, getting them just to install GitHub desktop, and someone puts their hand up having trouble installing the app. I get to them and see an iPad in the desk. Sighs, I explain that’s not going to work (maybe it does now?). They don’t understand why, because they can install so many other apps. I convinced them eventually. Not that I blame them, but it was interesting to see the user friendliness of a device basically block them from doing things and even understanding how that was happening.
For many with laptops, the course often became a gateway to the terminal and not finding it scary any more.
Also, thanks for your response!