Unfun fact: due to growing up with tablets instead of normal computers a lot of kids nowadays don’t know how stuff like directories work.
Working at a university I have seen some astounding shit; people just barely 10 years younger than me who can’t read analog clocks or make change let alone use a mouse or move a file to a flash drive.
Some of that’s cultural momentum right? Like I don’t know how many pickles it takes to make a Peck of Pickles despite hours singing about it as a kid. There’s not a lot of reason sans-nostalgia to read an analog clock or drive a manual car. (I love my manual, but they’re not getting any less niche with EVs on the way.)
And everyone’s going to learn something the first time, some time. But it is just nuts that for some people that is apparently after getting a job with a Bachelor’s, somehow. So much time, money, and energy was spent in the 90s/00s having computer classes in schools and now so much of it has been cut because the people in charge are so out of touch that watching youtube on a device designed to be easily usable is indistinguishable from “technical skills”.
No, I don’t think not being able to make change or not stopping touching a screen no matter how many times you are told that it isn’t a touch screen is cultural momentum. I genuinely think that we the older generations have failed Gen Z at a common sense and problem solving level and I very much hope that we don’t keep failing Gen Alpha. I was in school still when no child left behind went into effect and the difference was stark. It was said then that it was designed to create a generation of Republican voters and based on the most recent election it looks like it might have worked.
Give the next one a Zip drive and document please.
The stated article is from 2017. That’s not about kids growing up with tablets.
I have had a worrying amount of 40+ year old colleagues who dont know how directories work either. Just dump everything on the desktop. So I really doubt that has anything to do with tablets.
We’ve made tech way too accessible - and now we’re paying the price for it.
Back in 1995, we got our first family PC. Dad was never able to use it; despite our efforts to teach him. Couldn’t grasp left and right mouse button, much less concepts like directories, installing software, drivers, etc.
But on his iPad? He can do almost everything: e-mail, Facebook, watch TV, YouTube. And get subjected to boomer brainrot. Just like a toddler.
Is he more tech literate? Absolutely not. In fact, he’s regressing if anything. But we’ve made it so easy, even my completely tech illiterate dad can now argue with strangers on Facebook or post dumb shit on YouTube.
And it fucking shows. The amount of goddamn complete idiots online is shocking. I miss 1995, when you had to be a nerd to get online. It filtered out a lot of folks who simply shouldn’t be online.
Man it sounds so lame to say “I prefer the good old days” but its genuinely true when it comes to the internet, back when forums were the only social media, where banner ads were the only ads to worry about, before every website started collecting cookies and profiles, before celebrities started jumping on AMA’s on reddit, I mean even when reddit was small enough there was a stupid phrase so you’d know if someone else was a redditor. When does the narwhal bacon?
The narwhal shall forever bacon at midnight, even if its home has turned to shit :(
It all comes back to community. Back in those days, forums and platforms like IRC were great. They had a human scale; you quickly learned about the regulars, their personalities, likes and dislikes. Heck, on most forums that I visited, plenty of people used their actual name - including myself. The internet felt like a nice, safe community, like its own digital suburb.
Sometimes that was even literal. I used platforms like Cybertown and later on Second Life. Those let you own actual houses and and build stuff on there. In Cybertown - we usually just called it CT - I knew every resident on my block. I hosted house parties, had giveaways. We’d even have commemorative digital statues as gifts for guests. I still kept in touch when CT died. I still miss it.
your fault, and THANKS for doing this to the people that i’ll need to have take care of me when i’m old and feeble. water? like, in the toilet?
I know, right? It doesn’t even have electrolytes. That’s not what plants crave.
Don’t give your kids velcro shoes after about age three. Deal with teaching them to tie them for a few months. No, it’s not convenient, but you’re doing it for them, not you.
Before I discovered slip ons, I was always so mad we didnt have adult sizes with velcro. We have the technology to not have bits of string collecting germs from every bathroom we go in and every street we cross. What the hell?
That being said, I fully understand why athletic minded shoes and shoes made for more than walking sidewalks/indoors still have laces.
come on! it’s a lot easier to not toilet-train your kids if you can afford all the diapers
This says less about toddlers than it does about what Apple knows the public requires to use a computer.
Tieing shoes is done in 3d. One more dimension of complexity. Tablets on the other hand have a flat screen, so the toddler only needs to work two dimensions to use it.
All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead.
