im glad we’re finally talking about lack of technology literacy in younger people. everyone assumes we’ll automatically be good at it and have all the know-how because we grew up with it, and sure i might be more knowledgeable about it than say, someone 15 years older, but technology is changing and becoming more “turnkey” and a lot of the customization and workarounds just are not that accessible or obvious anymore. several tech companies boast that their new products are so simple and easy that a baby could do it, and users no longer have to figure out or understand anything behind the scenes because look, there’s a button right there you can press for this issue and if you’re still having problems you can just take it to a technician.
and im not saying this is inherently bad, it’s more accessible to people who don’t know anything about technology, but we are losing our computer skills because we don’t understand the tech and don’t see a need to. you buy a phone or a laptop and it’s perfectly usable fresh out the box and you don’t have to do anything to customize it because they’ve done it for you, which sucks especially considering they often don’t even want you to mess with the programming or software. customization is discouraged so they give you a handful of options they picked out and that’s that, and if your computer goes kaput then instead of learning how to fix it you can just throw it away and buy a new one! and while turnkey tech is a good option for a lot of people, we should still be encouraging know-how and teaching tech literacy in school as we become even more dependent on it. so many young people are struggling to work on computers and no one thinks to teach them because of the generation they’re in. it’s a major issue.
