this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We're in our early 40s.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

No, I think we'll be fine. It's Gen Z and Gen Alpha that are acting like boomers in regards to technology. My eldest niece and eldest nephew are tech-illiterate even though they grew up with PCs, tablets, and smartphones in their daily lives.

My eldest nephew can't figure out how to use Libby, or how to install unlock origin on his mobile Firefox browser, and my eldest niece has no idea how to troubleshoot or look up solutions to any tech problems at all.

It's frustrating and I had ban them from asking me anything tech related because I got tired of being the free, family tech support. Now I tell them "well, what did the sources say after you researched the solution?" And that always shuts them both up because I know they didn't even try looking up the solution on their own.

They also have the bad habit of believing everything they read online. I tried telling them both that they should look at more than one source when researching important information (nephew was doing a paper on the American Civil War) and they stared at me like I was nuts.

They are the living, breathing examples of Intelligence VS Wisdom.

I think us Millennials will, for the most part, have an easy time keeping up with new tech, even as we get older.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm thinking new interfaces/concepts of interaction might be where we lose touch.

Just like the previous baby boom generation had people with a lot of technical knowledge about for example how punch cards were used to configure computers and how to type with an old typewriter, we might know much about more advanced technical software and touch interfaces, but many might skip the Snapchat/TikTok scene and feel out of place.

Not to mention future upcoming things like a Brain-Computer Interface connected to an AI; perhaps to socialize, to create tools / content. Some of us, and maybe you as well, will join this scene too, but I already see people giving up and staying away from new stuff.

We will have a role in the technical side because of our knowledge, but that core knowledge is not that important any longer in many fields just like most developers don't have to worry about machine code any more.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Programming with punch cards was a niche skill very few had.

People who grew up in the 80s and 90s didn't just grow up with tech, we grew up with rapidly evolving tech that ranged from clunky and buggy to completely intuitive. We definitely have a better chance of keeping up as we age.

Social media like Snapchat/TikTok is less about knowing how to use tech and more "who gives a damn?" I care about that about as much as learning about Pokemon. Just toys for kids that I will never need or want to know about. THAT sort of generational divide is inevitable.

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