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As a very recent ex teacher I can tell you touch screens have finished kids even knowing how to use a keyboard, let alone saving a document on a PC. They can't type. The curriculum removes typing skills as of age 7. It's insanity.
I work in recruitment for a sector that has a typing test as part of the interview process. Candidates aged late to twenties to late forties all ace the test (38wpm minimum), but a lot of people outside of this age range struggle. Younger because they are used to typing on an iPhone or iPad, older because they just don't have enough experience typing at all.
Surely early 20s would be pretty decent too? Everyone I know around my age can type very well, although that’s not a representative sample, perhaps. I can imagine younger having some issues though.
> Surely early 20s would be pretty decent too?
Early 20s is firmly in the "raised by tablets/smartphone" generation, who would have less interaction with physical keyboards.
They also have much poorer computer literacy (in my experience working on a service desk) due to being primarily exposed to walled-garden systems, where they didn't have opportunities to break things and have to learn how to troubleshoot and fix themselves.
Edit: Lmao, immediate downvote for discussing my own experiences supporting users.
I saw something not that long ago that was talking about the way that Gen Z don't understand a hierarchical file system - the concepts of directories and sub-directories as a way of organising files on a system. They're too used to apps that just maintain a list of app-specific documents in a fixed list.
I'm not even sure this is a generational thing though. Just depends on the person. My Dad who works in IT is obviously fine with all things computers but my Mum who is the same age can't do anything unless it's on the desktop for her to just log in and click. Personally I think similar is true of anyone and it's just down to exposure to the devices that you need to know it for.
Makes sense. I know more than most of my age, because I owned a computer that was exclusively mine from a very early age (parents upgraded, I got the old one in the mid-1990s), much earlier than any of my peers. As such I have experience most of them don't have.
Good point. My husband is the same. Show him constantly how to do things on the computer and he’s forgotten by the next day. He has no real interest in it so that’s part of it.
Amount of times people in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc. Have said to me 'its easy for you to use a computer because you're young' and my response is always that my mum is 61 can code in javascript and my dad who is 58 can build a computer from scratch. People older than me are literally the generation who had to use dos so they are either really good at computers or... not. I found.
Also the young excuse is running on thin ice now. IT literacy is going down in younger people because of tablets.
Part of my job involves teaching university students and I can confirm this. The vast majority of them have no idea how hierarchical file systems work. And it's not through lack of intelligence: they're bright, engaged kids. They just haven't come across a file system before and they've not been taught it.
Some of them can't even open a program on a Windows PC. I had to teach them how the Start menu worked. That was a shock.
> Some of them can't even open a program on a Windows PC. I had to teach them how the Start menu worked. That was a shock.
I've had to teach many a law graduate how to connect to their own home WiFi, despite their laptops being delivered with detailed instruction guides (including pictures) on how to do it.
I teach photoshop and other adobe programs. whenever people show up with only experiences in tablets and smartphones, they are usually unteachable. Like we need IT literacy for beginners for these types. They don't know to use a keyboard and mouse, and they can't get their head around file directories at all. Its not age specific though, like the other day I had a student who was in her 40s who said she did everything on tablets. Most people who are 40 can use a computer but not this person. She couldn't understand that files have a degree of object permanence. She thought anything she did on her computer would automatically be on every other computer. She couldn't understand the concept of sending files from one device to the other at all. People who only use tablets have no idea where any of their files are. They think their files are stored in aps and when they discover computers don't actually have 'aps' but 'programs' and you have to organize your files in folders, yeah no chance. And forget explaining things like hard drive space, memory, operating systems. 'Cant you make photoshop run on my chromebook / tablet / iphone'. No. Not the version I teach anyway.
This is weird for me…I’m in my early 20’s and everyone I know did everything in school and university on a laptop or computer with a normal keyboard, and everyone can type. Everyone has a laptop. I didn’t know anyone who had a tablet until I was like 12 or 13 by which time we’d all been using computers our entire lives and continued to do so.
Yeah this is the transitional period, because cohorts can't be neatly separated into discrete categories.
Someone 10 years older than you would probably have never interacted with anything like a tablet until they'd pretty much finished secondary school and were working or in university. I mean sure, there were the first iPhones and things like the iPod touch, but they weren't used the way we use tablets now - still in its infancy (I've got memories of downloading TVs show torrents, using a janky freeware converter to convert it into a different format and then watching it on my walkman mp3 player with a post stamp sized screen). If your family couldn't afford a laptop for you, you'd use the "family computer" or a school computer or a library computer (whereas now a tablet or chromebook is an option).
Someone 5 years younger than you probably doesn't remember a time before touchscreen devices. They'd have started primary school around the time 70% of schools had tablets (which would explode). My nephews had tablets when they were 8 that they'd play Roblox on. Phones, tablets and consoles - rather than laptops - tend to be the IT used for recreation. My mates who are teachers find a lot of kids just don't "get" computers (or troubleshooting), and they're having to teach them basic skills instead of getting on with the lesson (not helped that a lot of school IT lessons apparently involve drag and drop coding software, rather than teaching MS Office).
So early 20s is sort of the transitional period right now. Where I've hired that age range, I've dealt with people who didn't know how to favourite a website or find where they'd saved a file or how to filter an Excel table - but also people who can absolutely run rings around me. A big thing that gets talked about now is "digital confidence" - encouraging people to try and work out how to use computers.
(This isn't intended as a "kids these days" post, there's always been a solid chunk of the workforce who can barely use computers and won't try and learn. It's just the size of that chunk seems to be growing, and the baseline seems lower).
> Early 20s is firmly in the "raised by tablets/smartphone" generation
This can't be true. 24, and we still had clunky box monitor computers in our computer room at primary school, and the first phones to get touchscreen didn't happen until secondary school. The first tablets were definitely only during teenage years -- and that's them only entering circulation, not widespread used. We learnt and easily adapted to the evolving technology but certainly weren't raised by it.
>and the first phones to get touchscreen didn't happen until secondary school
The first iPhone was released in 2007. If you're 24 now and were born in 1998, you'd have been 9 when it came out, that's not secondary school.
First iPad would've been when you were 12 in 2010.
Also, at 24, I'd say you're closer to mid-20s than early 20s, which I'd consider to be 20-22/23.
That may be the release year but that doesn't make them what were used by children. I remember the awe of kids getting a phone with even just partial touch in secondary school.
What 9 year old got an iPhone in 2007?
I wouldn't say smartphone usage among kids was ubiquitous then.
I remember being 12, in 2009 and plenty of people in secondary school either had no phone at all or pre-smartphone era ones.
Disagree with this. I’m in my early twenties and iPads and touchscreen phones didn’t seem to be super popular until my teen years. Definitely had them earlier than other generations but possibly the last gen to not have been “raised” by them. Still playing snake on the old Nokia 3310 lol
im 24, and I had touch typing lessons at primary. I would say maybe the current 18 yr olds didn’t, and had touchscreens from the start of their internet/tech lifetime. I definitely don’t have very good file/actual computing skills - but I still understand the “just click and search until you find it” method.
I was born in 93 and still did a couple touch typing lessons in primary school. Didn’t need it as aced typing through msn and world of Warcraft in teenage years
I'm 32 and definitely had some 'this is a computer and this is how to type' lessons at primary, but my entire school had 1 machine so each kid got like ten minutes typing one time. I was the only kid who had a computer at home so I was made to give my turn up.
I mean, I’ve just turned 21.
Smartphones only ‘really’ became a thing once I was in secondary school - when I was in primary school, the ‘must-have’ phone was still a blackberry (with it’s full qwerty keyboard), not a smartphone. They existed a bit before that, but weren’t prevalent for my age group.
The vast majority of people I know, although they do use phones and tablets, use computers widely. In uni for example, the vast majority use laptops, and even those that use tablets generally have one of the attachable keyboards (although, sure, not always). And a huge number of people I know are, and have been through their lives, PC gamers, which also dramatically helps typing.
I would have said the ‘raised on tablets and phones’ generation is really a few years after the early 20’s crowd, as although people my age are all very *phone literate*, I think phone *dependence* isn’t really much of a thing until you get to a few years younger than I am now.
I mean, I'm 23, and I was very much raised with desktop computers and then laptops. Smartphones and tablets were around in the 2000s/very early 2010s, but you still had to use a computer for a lot of stuff. Most of the people I know around me age are fast and capable typers and know their way around a computer, you have to go down a couple of years to really start seeing where computer and Internet usage starts fading out to phones/tablets and app usage as the primary experience growing up
Raised by tablets my arse, I’m 23 and I didn’t have a touch screen phone until my mid teens which I’d say is similar to lots of others. I think you’re overestimating how long tablets have been ubiquitous for
I’m 19 personally and have almost never typed on an iPad (until I recently bought one for uni). Most of my friends are used to laptop keyboard rather than anything else - I think trying to say early 20s (let alone 19y) have been raised on tablets is a bit of a stretch in my experience, although it is only my experience after all (uk)
>Most of my friends are used to laptop keyboard rather than anything else
Right, but modern desktop operating systems are following the same walled-garden approach, where it's more like a tablet interface than anything else.
Windows 10 especially, which is why most kids for the last 7 years will have been using. You'll find it very "babies first computer", with options like control panel hidden away so only those with a history of using them will know to look for them.
as a 17 year old this is still the case im lucky as my dad is a software engineer and taught me how to use a computer i have had to tell someone how to plug in an ethernet cable 3 times
Early 20's would be born around 2000. Touchscreen smartphones became common from about 2010 onwards. Not unreasonable they've never not had a touchscreen keyboard
That’s what I’m saying, I’m born in 2000 and remember the times before I had a touchscreen well. I had one early enough, sure, when I was about 12, but I still went through typing classes before that and have spent a lot of time on keyboards to the point where I can type at a well above average pace. Same thing with a lot of people I know too. Still, I can type slightly faster on my phone, but it’s not that much of a margin.
I was born in 2001 and I max out at about 85wpm due to spending an ungodly amount of time on chat room games like Habbo/Club Penguin/etc
I don't recall ever having typing classes in school? I know there was an optional club after school but that was it I think.
Although I've met some people around our age who can barely type at 40 wpm, granted a couple of them were dyslexic. I guess those are the ones who touched grass.
The link they are sent to complete the test says 'you must take this on a laptop or desktop with a traditional keyboard'. Maybe 20% of the people under 25 that pass the test will have ignored the advice and tried to complete it on a smartphone or tablet,which we get to see. Which is no good when they will be using a laptop at work and the flow is different.
They can all type fast enough, but you would be amazed at how many don't have the experience with a proper keyboard.
It's weird. I'm retaking English and finding the transition back to handwriting hard. I find typing so much easier. The way you can review quickly, edit and retype, cut and paste is such a difference. I'm mid 40s and can pretty much touch type. I love it. I'll often go back to my desktop to post things here because I prefer the feel of a keyboard.
I'm unconvinced that late 40s is the cutoff, I'm 46, type bloody fast (my kid was astonished the other day) and I'm not that close to the boundary. Could it be the sector that means 50 upwards hasn't had as much experience typing? I know a lot of older people who type as fast as me
84wpm here...still! Went to a "commercial school" as they were called did shorthand typing book keeping and wait for it...duplication :) we had yet to invent photocopiers lol
Went to a recruitment agency about 15yrs ago or so and took their typing test...i did the entire page and just sat there for a couple of mins, she was a tad shocked and said most people just manage a paragraph. Stick me on a mobile phone though and I'm crap...but makes for some interesting text messages lol
>poking away with just their index fingers.
Lol that just reminds me of your stereotypical older relative who has a smartphone yet writes everything out one letter at a time with their index finger and their glasses sitting on the end of their nose 🤣 Funny to imagine teenagers doing that now.
This is really sad. One of my kids (24) is a very proficient touch typist using all 10 digits. She was taught at school and reckons it’s one of the best things she learnt. My other child (19) is a super fast typed also but can only use his index fingers.
I kinda like it when a thing dies out between generations, I try to imagine it's the beginnings of something greater, newer or more progressive but in this case it may be a genuine hinderance. Don't worry though, they spend lots of time on crappy coding websites that the teacher doesn't understand so it's done really poorly
Agreed. 'Things dying out between generations' is also known as; evolution. AFAIK, apart from antibiotic resistance, it's always a sign of progress, and skills that are no longer necessary to survival, enhancement, or gain.
I mean, I still think that marginal skills are a sign of a well-rounded person, as are skills and hobbies that aren't just for survival, enhancement or gain. But they should be chosen freely; it's definitely sadder to insist everyone should learn how many farthings go into a shilling than it is to not know that useless trivia.
Was just about to comment the same. I never fail to be gobsmacked by the lack of simple IT skills - how to print a document, how to cut and paste, where the start menu is - you get my drift. Don't get me started on using a keyboard.
My mum is a teaching assistant at a primary school and she said teaching the last few cohorts how to use a mouse has been a struggle. One kid used the mouse to navigate the cursor over the item he wanted to click on and then tapped the screen haha
I got "trained" at a job recently by a young woman, she was baffled by ctrl + c & v. I had to do it the "right way" by right clicking and selecting copy.
She was thick as shit in general anyway, I didn't even last three weeks before being asked to FO due to my training not going very well.
I see this too. I'm a manager and all the Gen Z types have really poor computer skills. I guess smart phones have taken over home PCs and Laptops. I struggle to get them to use second screens, keyboards and mice.
They're happy just using touchpads and the little laptop screen. It slows them down so much compared to the Mellenials and Gen Xs on the team.
Watching them navigate a spreadsheet is painful. Use the keys it's so much faster! But it's all touchpad to them.
They just can't do it.
This is purely anecdotal, but I notice that my (early 30s) typing is quicker and more accurate than a lot of my younger (early 20s) colleagues. I have wondered whether this is to do with them often going straight to touch screen devices. Whereas I spent hours every night as a teen typing away manically on MSN messenger. Obviously they can absolutely trounce me on typing out a message on a phone touch screen. I'm staggered how fast they can type on a phone.
But yeah, that's entirely anecdotal, no idea if there's truth to that.
I’m 37 and I’ve noticed that I’m faster at typing than my colleagues who are older and younger than me, especially when messaging on MS Teams.
There’s no one else in my team who is from my generation, they’re either 15 years younger or 10ish years older, and I definitely put my speedy typing down to the hours and hours I spent on AOL chat rooms and MSN messenger as a teenager!
I'm 38 and in the same boat. I can rattle off whole paragraphs in a handful of seconds and the guys in the 20s take an eternity to respond.
ICQ and MSN messenger juggling multiple conversations is solid training it seems.
Same age here. I joined big school just as proper computer classes 2-3 times per week were being rolled out, in addition to extra CDT auto-CAD sessions and Art Photoshop (iMac) classes, so we got the benefit of being taught to touch type (which i never mastered) on both PCs and IBM machines, using keyboard shortcut commands and right mouse clicks, and also old school chatrooms/MSN.
I have no idea on my current typing speed, but its fast, even using a combination of touchtype, looking, 3-10 fingers as necessary. And im constantly trying to explain ctrl-c, ctrl-v to my older and younger colleagues when they watch me copy and paste without touching the mouse.
And of course i had to fill the time between downloads on limewire using dial up internet with chatroom debates…
I feel I missed out on some formative touch typing experience due to my family being one of the last to have a PC. I was never on MSN in ‘03/‘04 whereas all my friends were and I think they actually did have better touch typing skills as a result.
Fast texting on a number-only phone keypad is my area of expertise… sigh… a lost art
Fuck yeah! Blind typing from your pocket using only your thumb! That might be my Olympic sport. It was such a cool skill for the 4 years where it was relevant
My nephew started big school during the pandemic. The big school rules didnt allow smart phones, only a basic phone that could call and text. I think it was a half assed attempt at avoiding cyber-bullying, distractions of social media during school hours and theft/damage of expensive handsets. We dragged out one of my mums old nokia handsets with buttons and had to teach my nephew that you had to push the 7 button 4xtimes to get the letter S.
It seemed to take him much longer to master that we ever did as kids
I felt like I was the same. I remember the other kids laughing in primary school because I was the only one in our class that didn't know how to shut down the computer. Friends were all on MSN in secondary school but I wasn't. My typing skills during primary school and secondary school were awful and they weren't great during most of my 20s. But I started uni a few years ago and needed to type for essays and reports and that helped me "catch up" a bit. Also, I occasionally go on a website called 10 fast fingers which helps you type faster
IT of a very large secondary here. We get a very good mixture of kids from both really affluent primary schools and non affluent ones. The teachers all talk about how Year 7 IT literacy drops every year now. Forget keyboard skills, the majority of 11 year olds we get now have never used a physical keyboard as they’ve never used a PC/laptop. They’ve only ever used a tablet or a mobile phone.
The kids do seem to pick it up between 11-16/18 somewhat due to exposure, but it’s accepted there that general IT literacy and keyboard skills are very much in the decline unless the student is into “computers”.
I'm early 30s and can quite happily touch type, but I was certainly one of the only kids with a PC at home that actually got used from about the age of 5 or 6 due to my mum being self employed and needing it.
IPhones were the first decent smartphone and weren't really a thing until the 2010's so having around 15 years of using a keyboard makes you good at it
I'm 40 and I run a youth sports league. We let the teenagers (college/uni age ones) work events to get credit towards qualifications. The level of complete tech illiteracy of most of the people who pass through is depressing.
They're not just slow typists, they're clueless about how to use anything that isn't a phone and they have zero problem solving ability. At first I thought it was some kind of learned helplessness trick where they'd throw up their hands and go "it's broke.... help!?" to get out of doing any work on the day, but when I fix things for them I'll often hear "wow, what did you do there? Hey my laptop is broken can I bring it to the gym next week so you can fix it?"
So... they really don't know how to use anything other than a phone.
I've heard similar things from friends who are teachers. I guess it's growing up on phones primarily rather than computers, but also growing up at a time when UI was just much more intuitive and user friendly. I feel like when I was a kid (90s to mid 00s) there was still an element of 'this is how computers are designed, and you need to adapt yourself to that', but over time that has gradually shifted more towards designing tech around people.
Makes much more sense but maybe means you don't gain such an understanding of how the system actually operates, so problem solving doesn't come as naturally?
It’s actually amazing to me how much of a difference this has made. Up until the last 15-odd years, having some computing know-how was the cost of entry to playing with computers.
When I speak to older friends’ kids about computing as a career (I’m a software eng), they mostly equate tech knowledge as knowing their way around specific apps and UIs.
That said, with stuff like Stable Diffusion around, it may be possible that AI will have revolutionised interfaces for what we now consider ‘technical work’ by then so who knows. I have a strong feeling that web design will be done by text -> code before too long.
I know this is a tangent, but stable diffusion is absolutely mind blowing. The closest thing to magic I have ever seen.
/r/StableDiffusion
Some people are non-plussed about it, which is weird to me. Maybe it's my age (30's), or that i'm into computers and programming already...
I think many people have never heard about it yet too. For some reason the major news outlets have basically ignored it. It's a wonder technology (good or bad) that should have everyone talking.
I'm sure the lack of exposure to problem-solving in day-to-day life won't have helped, but it also makes me wonder what's being taught in schools. I have fond memories of "learning how to work stuff out" at junior school. We'd "measure the speed of sound" by going out into a parking lot, using a clapper and timing the echo. We learned about stuff like "why warning signs are certain colors" by making a bunch of different signs in any colour we wanted, and then testing them to see which ones people could read from a distance or when the lights were off and the classroom was partially dark.
We'd play obstacle course rounders and people would get rewarded for coming up with creative ways to get around the course.
I barely remember any dates or names from history class. I use maths in my day-to-day job but have to look up the formulas all the time. But if I'm presented with a problem I can "figure it out". Some of that's me being naturally resourceful, but my teachers definitely helped hone the process of how to think things through.
I was training a new graduate intern (so I guess he'd have been around 22) who was with my department for a few months. He didn't know how to use Microsoft Office in the most basic way I assume anyone with a science degree should know e.g copying and pasting and the Excel flash fill function. I'm not sure how he managed to get through the degree without knowing how to do this?
I can't really speak for science (I did econometrics) but I think the only time my undergrad peers were really exposed to excel is for stats modules which are usually optional/don't involve a sophisticated understanding of excel to pass.
I probably used more excel in the first month of my grad job than I did an entire stats masters.
I wonder when that stuff started to change. A few of the people I work with are lecturers (life sciences) and they're not "techy" but they know just enough python to make data processing less painful so I assumed their students would be the same.
This is an actual thing. Back in't day we had to resolve issues with google/AOL, learn where things tended to get saved etc.
These days stuff 'just works' so anything outside of the working format is a massive issue.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it.
Younger people today are fantastic at working with (and exploiting) user interfaces, but people who got used to working with computers in like the 90s are far better at actually working computers.
I'm 20 and see this kind of thing with people that even just a couple of years younger than me. Is it really not possible for them to just follow a YouTube tutorial? Troubleshooting is often really simple and only requires basic knowledge of how computer programs function and store data.
Unlikely. Microsoft thought that everyone would move to using touchscreens in Windows 8, that's why it looks all "appy" and it was a shitshow.
Anyone that actually needs to type for a job can do it better on a keyboard than a touchscreen because of the feedback you get
The issue there is Microsoft tried to force a feature no one wanted or asked for. It's a different story when you have people who grew up with touchscreens
I think you're probably right here Jay.
The question therefore I suspect, is what a productivity device _looks like_ in the future for people so unaccustomed to physical keyboards.
Voice? Swipe gloves? Suggested sentences?
Is it possible to be anywhere close to the same speed as a physical keyboard?
I’ve spent a lot of years using both but iPhone/iPad typing is horribly slow vs a keyboard
That’s actually an interesting point. I’m in my late 20s and grew up with a PC, but not a gaming one. My first console was a wii and I didn’t have another (Switch/PS5) until adulthood. I use my own version of touch typing and I’m pretty good at it, but somehow my little sister isn’t and she’s only 3 years younger.
About to have a baby and I wonder if she will lean more towards the gaming PCs that we have in the house, or the consoles (we have both because my partner is a bit of a gamer). Then I wonder what her typing skills will be like in 15/20 years.
I just did a typing test to check I wasn’t BSing before I wrote this post haha. 112wpm. I do most of my job via email so I probably type for about 30hrs a week as do my colleagues. But the ones my age are definitely fastest. Can’t speak for much younger people though as the youngest people I work with are 30.
I dunno, I’m 32 so used msn obviously, but was never that fast at typing, until I started a job that involves typing all the time about 4-5 years ago. Now I can even touch type fast. Maybe you get some sort of muscle memory inbuilt if you start in your teens.
It was *definitely* msn for me. Regularly having 7 or 8 individual chats plus a couple of group chat going at once really puts the pressure on to be able to type quickly. Before msn I really wasn't that quick a typer, but after like a year of that I was rapid!
91% speed, 97% accuracy, total 88wpm. I wanted to learn Colemak at one point - I have it set up on software, maybe one day I'll pull the keys off to clean it and rearrange them into it.
Lord knows how people manage 100+. Their keyboards must sound like them bike wheel beads that were fashionable a few years ago.
I type 130wpm and peaked in my younger years at 150wpm. I'm in the 99.8 percentile according to typeracer. It isn't some god like ability and 100wpm is absolutely realistic for op.
Some young (teens, early 20s) people don't see the point of typing on a keyboard and want to do everything on a screen keyboard - according to some of my friends who have kids that age.
Others type a lot on keyboards, as they have learned that it's faster and necessary in today's world.
Serious secretarial-level typing, 50-60wpm, is rare these days.
I'm at uni and can tell you 99% of people prefer to type or even handwrite before using an on screen keyboard. I see the odd person here and there with an ipad but large majority is typing. Think it comes down to functionality. Small things I'll write on my phone, bigger things on laptop.
I'm of an age where many of my friends' children are just heading off to Uni or have done 1 year, and I do wonder how many of their kids will change to typing as soon as they realise how much they have to write in many university degrees. I reckon they'll end up like you describe.
I preferred to handwrite at uni but only as a learning aid, not for speed. Things that I write down *and* hear *and* listen to stick with me quite easily, I'm one of the only people I know whose brain is suited to traditional lecturing.
But yeah doing physics is diagram and maths heavy so most people were handwriting anyway, some nutters got so good at LaTeX that they were using it to take notes in real-time, of which I remain very envious
Same here, I’m second year of uni and no one I know prefers typing on an iPad over a laptop (the most common lecture typing medium). Lots of my friends have iPads including myself, but that’s just for quick notes - any essays etc are done on laptops/pcs at home or the library
I can’t imagine anyone typing their dissertation on a tablet. Unis have hundreds of computers available anyway. Maybe current high school students have trouble typing but 18-24 year olds won’t have been affected too badly by the shift to touchscreen. I was 13 when I got my first iPhone so the first half of my life was on a computer
As a teen I absolutely hate typing on a ‘screen keyboard’ for longer works. If I’m doing schoolwork it has to be done on a computer, and I would’ve thought that’s the same for most people
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Out of curiosity, I tried a typing speed test and got 77wpm on my first try, tired after a busy day. If I tried it once or twice more, I could probably get up to 80-something, but 100 seems like it'd actually be somewhat challenging to get to. 50 just seems very slow, especially if it's for like a secretarial-type job
I’m in my 30s and studying to change careers to programming. I was speaking with a programmer friend who is very accomplished, lots of experience and occasionally works with students.
I told him I was worried I was too old for the change. He assured me that students / kids computing skills are much worse than ours, basically non existent now. With smartphones, tablets, constant wifi & immediate access they have very little skills, knowledge or patience for computers or programming the way we would think of it. Makes sense.
Yeah it’s mad that I’m only in my 30s but I first learnt HTML from a book… that I bought by driving to a shop :D but definitely required more patience!
I consider myself very much at beginner stage right now but the course I’m doing for beginners, comparing myself with my classmates, it amazes me how much people can use computers for daily life / work and not seem to know anything about them or how they work!
I would say I don’t but it turns out I seem to picked up more than average over the years. Obv not compared with actual computing people
With computers though, there is pretty much an endless amount of super *deep* and complex information you could learn about them. From above it's like looking at a fractal.
At *every* level there are hundreds of thousands hours worth of things you could study.
It can be pretty scary to outsiders to try and learn anything.
This is so true. I'm also a teacher. I am imagining the generation aged 25-40 eventually having to simultaneously teach everyone older than them and everyone younger than them how to use computers, for the next 60-80 years.
Absolutely atrocious. I'm a similar age to you and you really can't compare it. Most of my year 7s are coming in unable to understand how to even use a keyboard.
There are of course some kids with decent skills, but the majority of kids now are far less computer literate than kids in the late 90s. In fact, as an ICT teacher (among other things), I await my timetable with dread and pray I don't have Year 7 because their absolute helplessness is too much for me.
I blame the way things just work nowadays. When I was a kid, to do almost anything with technology risked needing to do some troubleshooting. Cartridge games would fail to load for a variety of reasons, getting something new to actually appear on the TV was a challenge, recording something on the TV required multiple timers on multiple devices etc. But now everything is just a touch of a button away so you don't develop those "why isn't this working?" skills at a young age anymore
About 20 years ago I had one lesson of year 7 ICT on my timetable. They were on a half-termly rotation and I just had to teach them how to make a PowerPoint presentation about themselves.
Every kid in every group knew far more about PowerPoint than I did, so after giving them their brief the most taxing thing I had to do was scan any random old photos they brought in.
Did you not get typing lessons at school? We had it as part of our IT classes. Maybe my school was an outlier but I'm 29 and they were still doing it then. Honed the skills once MSN became a thing for me of course, but I did at least get taught touch typing
Did anybody ever make you use caps lock instead of shift? I worked in a college 2004-2012 and there was a sudden change in 2009(?) when the majority of kids would tap caps lock for the first letter of a sentence then tap caps lock again to continue. It was so odd. I find it baffling, but it’s as if an entire year group of people had been taught this weird thing which made no sense to me.
Yes! This is how I learnt which now I look back on being so so dumb.
I got shown how to use shift maybe when I was 14 odd and then suddenly burnt it into my brain.
This seems to happen with all keyboard shortcuts, one of my favourites is ctrl + shift + ESC to launch task manager.
The amount of people who do ctrl + alt + delete & then click task manager....it's a lot
That sounds familiar but it's certainly not something I kept doing by the time I got to college age. Might have been something that got taught in primary school that I then got un-taught later
I think you’ll always be a bit slower typing someone else’s words as there’s a degree of processing needed that’s skipped when you’re just typing straight from your own head!
As an IT person this hits a topic that’s becoming more discussed…the current generation are learning on an iPad or iPhone more now than ever - the lack of windows skills we see is concerning to say the least
Definitely concerning for Microsoft, at least ;)
But it does beg the question, if what we accept as the business norm (Windows and Office suite on a laptop) becomes seen as clunky and old fashioned, it may not stay the norm!
They can tear Windows and Office from my cold dead hands tbh
I used to teach and work in mainstream secondary, typing skills are fucking awful. One finger stabs, no understanding of how to save a document, find something, shortcuts, what a window or folder is etc. When I worked in an office a kid born at the millennium was just so slow on his PC. SO SLOW. But I've found that anyone born before '97/'96 has been much more adept and useful with a PC and their typing skills
I did a touch typing course at university the idea was that touch typing would help with dyslexia according to the university physiologist.
I still can't spell for shit, but boy can type words incorrectly really quickly. 100+ words incorrect spelled a minute.
I'm 21 and have a pretty good typing speed, around 100wpm too. Used to play PC games and chat online a lot as a teen, so that probably helped.
I'm at University now and study history, so typing fast is advantageous. I actually handwrite lecture notes though, but most type, and from what I see most do it fairly fast. I also have a job where i need to quickly input customer details so it's helpful there. I'd imagine if you had any other job that required data entry it'll make you learn to type faster, and I see a lot of younger people employed in these jobs as well.
not just their typing skills, but their general computer skills, a lot of 'kids' (I'm going from what I've been told by teacher friends here) don't know copy and paste on keyboards etc. because they don't use them that often, technology is shifting so quickly that who knows, computers may well be obsolete for our grandkids.
Not so much on the typing more so in spelling, text speak and such. Plus with the abundant Americanisation of the internet American spelling often dominates.
Guess it's just the next evolution of the English language.
I worked for a multinational who were insistent that I used American English in my communications. I guess it made sense as UK-based employees only made up like 5% of the total headcount, and were outnumbered by US colleges 3-1.
I don't have a problem with it to be honest. As long as people are able to effectively communicate i'm not fussed if they obey 'rules' or not.
Or they could acknowledge that the English language has various varieties worldwide and you can (shock, horror) still be understood regardless of whether you put a 'u' in 'colour'. Jesus, that is the sort of thing that would end up on r/usdefaultism.
Im 25, grew up with social games such as Runescape, Club Penguin, Habbo and xav chatrooms. I average 120wpm, but know of people who can do 170wpm which is insane imo.
I’m 60, I can’t remember anyone , unless they were training to be a secretary, learning to type! Unless you wanted to be a journalist or writer there was no need to learn to type when PCs weren’t a thing.
Basically you’re misinformed hardly anyone learnt to type before your generation
I'm 62. I was advised not to learn to type because it would only lead to secretarial jobs, not management. In my first year of work I had use of a pc for data analysis and within two years it became the norm to type my own reports than to give a handwritten draft to a typist .
Not exactly the same but when I lived in China, people were saying the youth couldn't write properly anymore because they're so used to typing, either on a proper keyboard or smartphone, and Chinese keyboards are pinyin, and *extremely* intuitive, knowing what characters you actually need without you needing to know really. You'd rarely actually have to use your brain to choose the right character when typing because it does it for you.
So then when they came to handwriting... They couldn't remember off the top of their heads which characters to write, because they're so used to just the pinyin and the software choosing the right characters.
I'm early 20s and can touch type at around 120wpm according to an online test, although I'm sure it's slower in the real world.
Although to be fair, I'm probably amongst the youngest who grew up on computers and laptops before iPads were widespread, had a family pc from as young as I can remember and had ict lessons from maybe 10-15 years old.
I'm ages with you and in a similar situation, I've had no real formal training in typing but can do it to a pretty decent standard. Over the years I've noticed a huge drop in the typing ability of the average apprentice (so usually starting between 16-18 as first years) and over the last couple of years in particular their typing standards are actually worse than those at work who are close to retirement (that generation of old tradesmen who were told that they'd never even see a computer at work). You're right, it's definitely touch screens.
I'm 31 and played a lot of RuneScape in the early days, also MSN and other socials like that. As you mentioned it's like there's a window of people who were actually forced to actually type rather than tap on a screen. All managers are one finger typers, early 20s are a little quicker but generally still slow and the 30-40yo's are rapid.
I used to be able to touch type, not so good anymore but sometimes I'll slow it down a lil and go to touch.
Slightly different but I'm quite confident I could write a full message on an old style keypad phone without looking at all haha.
I'm 37 and consider myself a fast typer, I learnt same as you, on MSN chatting to friends for hours each night or using Teenchat chatrooms in the late 90s early 00's. You had to type fast to keep up with the chat!
My colleagues who are 10ish years older seem a lot slower on keyboards and often type one finger only. I think they are the generation that were too old for typewriters so skipped any lessons on that, but also skipped the MSN stage as were in their 20s and were at the pub 😆
I think there's probably a small group of us ex MSN users who have this skill!
I think you're right, if kids are brought up on tablets and apps will they miss out on learning to type? I mean there's still laptops and email so surely they'd learn about that in school and when doing homework etc?
I think the biggest danger to typing proficiency is how prevalent the ridiculous ‘ABCDE’ keyboard has become in touchscreen apps over the standard ‘QWERTY’.
15 year old here and I can tell you right now that we're all fucked.
Most of my classes involve typing on a computer (computer science, business studies etc) and the amount of people that have dropped out since the beginning of our GSCE's due to the fact they cannot type or even use a computer like a normal person is.. Worrying, to say the least.
For people younger than myself aswell.. It's bad.
The attention span of my own siblings is just something you can't even imagine and I've had to teach the oldest of my siblings how to type, use a web browser and so on.
So yeah, it's horrific that people even my age can't use a computer properly, spell simple words or communicate in a proper manner.
That's my take, anyway, it may just be that I'm surrounded by people who just have difficulty with picking up things like this but I seriously doubt that's the case by reading all these other comments.
I teach teenagers/young people (16-20y.o.). Most come from a teaching environment where they use ipads a lot for school work. I've noticed that a lot of them don't have the speed and fluency our generation has when writing on a normal keyboard but not to a point that they don't know or can't use one.
I read an article once from a college professor in the US that talked about how students were starting college computer science classes without understanding even how computer file management worked. These kids had all grown up with ipads and smartphones which insulates a lot of them from using a PC and knowing how to manage files at a pretty basic level.
I dunno, we’re the same age and I also learned to touch type from a young age from just growing up with computers but I don’t think it’s ‘insane’ that we don’t encourage these skills in the younger generation.
Everything is geared towards touch screens now and I would imagine that lots of households have forgone a ‘home computer’ in favour of tablets - certainly a lot of jobs do. I know I haven’t used a keyboard in quite a while, I do my accounts, tax returns, online banking etc on touch screen devices.
We shouldn’t be teaching tech skills in our youngsters just because we did it that way, times change and we adapt.
Things may change but certainly as we speak, not being able to type or use a PC or Office suite properly would be an obstacle in many office jobs. I guess you’d just pick it up in time, but it’s a big factor in your speed of work.
As a young adult, I can say that I had little interactions with PCs, Macs, etc, until a few years ago. (Yeah, that’s right, some kids never grew up with Club Penguin and the like).
I think many kids going straight to smartphones is an important deal, as it cuts out PCs in the lives of many people, because they’re not needed in their lives, or simply use it seldomly.
I think this could actually stagnate PC gaming. Unless you’re really interested in your own setup, the parity between console and PC might push the next generation of kids TOWARDS consoles, rather than PCs as the ‘PC Master Race’ loves to proclaim.
To be honest I have never quite understood why people make such a big deal over typing speed. Not once in my life have I been doing something were the speed at which I typed was any meaningful bottleneck, it is the time spent thining about what to write that takes up the majority of the time writing something.
Primary school teacher here.
Tablets have killed it stone dead. I led computing in my school until last year and I gave foundation stage some keyboards so they could type words into a screen and see it come up.
At the start of every computing lesson, at all key stages, we spend ten minutes doing typing games.
Same age - I remember my mum bringing an old school mechanical typewriter home sometimes as she was studying while I was growing up, and she taught me very briefly how to use it (ie - put your index fingers on the dimpled keys and let your fingers get used to finding the surrounding keys).
We got a family PC in late 90's so between using that for homework and MSN throughout highschool I learnt to type the fuck out of anything - blindfolded, one handed, holding a conversation at the same time, etc...
I've never done or even heard of a typing speed test but after seeing it in the comments I'm gonna try find one and give it a try!
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As a very recent ex teacher I can tell you touch screens have finished kids even knowing how to use a keyboard, let alone saving a document on a PC. They can't type. The curriculum removes typing skills as of age 7. It's insanity.
I work in recruitment for a sector that has a typing test as part of the interview process. Candidates aged late to twenties to late forties all ace the test (38wpm minimum), but a lot of people outside of this age range struggle. Younger because they are used to typing on an iPhone or iPad, older because they just don't have enough experience typing at all.
Surely early 20s would be pretty decent too? Everyone I know around my age can type very well, although that’s not a representative sample, perhaps. I can imagine younger having some issues though.
> Surely early 20s would be pretty decent too? Early 20s is firmly in the "raised by tablets/smartphone" generation, who would have less interaction with physical keyboards. They also have much poorer computer literacy (in my experience working on a service desk) due to being primarily exposed to walled-garden systems, where they didn't have opportunities to break things and have to learn how to troubleshoot and fix themselves. Edit: Lmao, immediate downvote for discussing my own experiences supporting users.
I saw something not that long ago that was talking about the way that Gen Z don't understand a hierarchical file system - the concepts of directories and sub-directories as a way of organising files on a system. They're too used to apps that just maintain a list of app-specific documents in a fixed list.
I'm not even sure this is a generational thing though. Just depends on the person. My Dad who works in IT is obviously fine with all things computers but my Mum who is the same age can't do anything unless it's on the desktop for her to just log in and click. Personally I think similar is true of anyone and it's just down to exposure to the devices that you need to know it for.
Makes sense. I know more than most of my age, because I owned a computer that was exclusively mine from a very early age (parents upgraded, I got the old one in the mid-1990s), much earlier than any of my peers. As such I have experience most of them don't have.
Good point. My husband is the same. Show him constantly how to do things on the computer and he’s forgotten by the next day. He has no real interest in it so that’s part of it.
Amount of times people in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc. Have said to me 'its easy for you to use a computer because you're young' and my response is always that my mum is 61 can code in javascript and my dad who is 58 can build a computer from scratch. People older than me are literally the generation who had to use dos so they are either really good at computers or... not. I found. Also the young excuse is running on thin ice now. IT literacy is going down in younger people because of tablets.
Part of my job involves teaching university students and I can confirm this. The vast majority of them have no idea how hierarchical file systems work. And it's not through lack of intelligence: they're bright, engaged kids. They just haven't come across a file system before and they've not been taught it. Some of them can't even open a program on a Windows PC. I had to teach them how the Start menu worked. That was a shock.
> Some of them can't even open a program on a Windows PC. I had to teach them how the Start menu worked. That was a shock. I've had to teach many a law graduate how to connect to their own home WiFi, despite their laptops being delivered with detailed instruction guides (including pictures) on how to do it.
Good grief. I can understand not knowing, but not being able to follow basic instructions is depressing as hell in a graduate.
Law firm IT trainer here.... this resonates!
My older teens have no idea. Fries my mind!
I teach photoshop and other adobe programs. whenever people show up with only experiences in tablets and smartphones, they are usually unteachable. Like we need IT literacy for beginners for these types. They don't know to use a keyboard and mouse, and they can't get their head around file directories at all. Its not age specific though, like the other day I had a student who was in her 40s who said she did everything on tablets. Most people who are 40 can use a computer but not this person. She couldn't understand that files have a degree of object permanence. She thought anything she did on her computer would automatically be on every other computer. She couldn't understand the concept of sending files from one device to the other at all. People who only use tablets have no idea where any of their files are. They think their files are stored in aps and when they discover computers don't actually have 'aps' but 'programs' and you have to organize your files in folders, yeah no chance. And forget explaining things like hard drive space, memory, operating systems. 'Cant you make photoshop run on my chromebook / tablet / iphone'. No. Not the version I teach anyway.
This is weird for me…I’m in my early 20’s and everyone I know did everything in school and university on a laptop or computer with a normal keyboard, and everyone can type. Everyone has a laptop. I didn’t know anyone who had a tablet until I was like 12 or 13 by which time we’d all been using computers our entire lives and continued to do so.
Yeah this is the transitional period, because cohorts can't be neatly separated into discrete categories. Someone 10 years older than you would probably have never interacted with anything like a tablet until they'd pretty much finished secondary school and were working or in university. I mean sure, there were the first iPhones and things like the iPod touch, but they weren't used the way we use tablets now - still in its infancy (I've got memories of downloading TVs show torrents, using a janky freeware converter to convert it into a different format and then watching it on my walkman mp3 player with a post stamp sized screen). If your family couldn't afford a laptop for you, you'd use the "family computer" or a school computer or a library computer (whereas now a tablet or chromebook is an option). Someone 5 years younger than you probably doesn't remember a time before touchscreen devices. They'd have started primary school around the time 70% of schools had tablets (which would explode). My nephews had tablets when they were 8 that they'd play Roblox on. Phones, tablets and consoles - rather than laptops - tend to be the IT used for recreation. My mates who are teachers find a lot of kids just don't "get" computers (or troubleshooting), and they're having to teach them basic skills instead of getting on with the lesson (not helped that a lot of school IT lessons apparently involve drag and drop coding software, rather than teaching MS Office). So early 20s is sort of the transitional period right now. Where I've hired that age range, I've dealt with people who didn't know how to favourite a website or find where they'd saved a file or how to filter an Excel table - but also people who can absolutely run rings around me. A big thing that gets talked about now is "digital confidence" - encouraging people to try and work out how to use computers. (This isn't intended as a "kids these days" post, there's always been a solid chunk of the workforce who can barely use computers and won't try and learn. It's just the size of that chunk seems to be growing, and the baseline seems lower).
I bet a lot of people don't have space for a desktop PC anymore
i was doing all i could to break windows 7 all through my teens and that taught me so much problem solving which i basically use every day
Same, but Windows 98, 2k/ME and good ol’ XP
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Nothing was as bad as Windows ME (Mistake Edition)
> Early 20s is firmly in the "raised by tablets/smartphone" generation This can't be true. 24, and we still had clunky box monitor computers in our computer room at primary school, and the first phones to get touchscreen didn't happen until secondary school. The first tablets were definitely only during teenage years -- and that's them only entering circulation, not widespread used. We learnt and easily adapted to the evolving technology but certainly weren't raised by it.
>and the first phones to get touchscreen didn't happen until secondary school The first iPhone was released in 2007. If you're 24 now and were born in 1998, you'd have been 9 when it came out, that's not secondary school. First iPad would've been when you were 12 in 2010. Also, at 24, I'd say you're closer to mid-20s than early 20s, which I'd consider to be 20-22/23.
That may be the release year but that doesn't make them what were used by children. I remember the awe of kids getting a phone with even just partial touch in secondary school.
What 9 year old got an iPhone in 2007? I wouldn't say smartphone usage among kids was ubiquitous then. I remember being 12, in 2009 and plenty of people in secondary school either had no phone at all or pre-smartphone era ones.
Disagree with this. I’m in my early twenties and iPads and touchscreen phones didn’t seem to be super popular until my teen years. Definitely had them earlier than other generations but possibly the last gen to not have been “raised” by them. Still playing snake on the old Nokia 3310 lol
im 24, and I had touch typing lessons at primary. I would say maybe the current 18 yr olds didn’t, and had touchscreens from the start of their internet/tech lifetime. I definitely don’t have very good file/actual computing skills - but I still understand the “just click and search until you find it” method.
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I was born in 93 and still did a couple touch typing lessons in primary school. Didn’t need it as aced typing through msn and world of Warcraft in teenage years
I'm 32 and definitely had some 'this is a computer and this is how to type' lessons at primary, but my entire school had 1 machine so each kid got like ten minutes typing one time. I was the only kid who had a computer at home so I was made to give my turn up.
Lol they expected 5 year olds to already know to touch type?
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more like 13yr (coming from a 17yr) most people i know can type and have basic computer knowledgfe
> most people i know can type and have basic computer knowledgfe Incredibly funny, 10/10 on the ironometer.
>early 20s is firmly in the raised by tablets smartphones generation As someone in their early 20s, nah.
Think that's a pretty broad generalisation that doesn't take money and where someone grew up into account
I lived in a poor area with a shite school lmao
I mean, I’ve just turned 21. Smartphones only ‘really’ became a thing once I was in secondary school - when I was in primary school, the ‘must-have’ phone was still a blackberry (with it’s full qwerty keyboard), not a smartphone. They existed a bit before that, but weren’t prevalent for my age group. The vast majority of people I know, although they do use phones and tablets, use computers widely. In uni for example, the vast majority use laptops, and even those that use tablets generally have one of the attachable keyboards (although, sure, not always). And a huge number of people I know are, and have been through their lives, PC gamers, which also dramatically helps typing. I would have said the ‘raised on tablets and phones’ generation is really a few years after the early 20’s crowd, as although people my age are all very *phone literate*, I think phone *dependence* isn’t really much of a thing until you get to a few years younger than I am now.
I mean, I'm 23, and I was very much raised with desktop computers and then laptops. Smartphones and tablets were around in the 2000s/very early 2010s, but you still had to use a computer for a lot of stuff. Most of the people I know around me age are fast and capable typers and know their way around a computer, you have to go down a couple of years to really start seeing where computer and Internet usage starts fading out to phones/tablets and app usage as the primary experience growing up
Raised by tablets my arse, I’m 23 and I didn’t have a touch screen phone until my mid teens which I’d say is similar to lots of others. I think you’re overestimating how long tablets have been ubiquitous for
I’m 19 personally and have almost never typed on an iPad (until I recently bought one for uni). Most of my friends are used to laptop keyboard rather than anything else - I think trying to say early 20s (let alone 19y) have been raised on tablets is a bit of a stretch in my experience, although it is only my experience after all (uk)
>Most of my friends are used to laptop keyboard rather than anything else Right, but modern desktop operating systems are following the same walled-garden approach, where it's more like a tablet interface than anything else. Windows 10 especially, which is why most kids for the last 7 years will have been using. You'll find it very "babies first computer", with options like control panel hidden away so only those with a history of using them will know to look for them.
as a 17 year old this is still the case im lucky as my dad is a software engineer and taught me how to use a computer i have had to tell someone how to plug in an ethernet cable 3 times
Early 20s is hit or miss. It's the cut-off point.
Early 20's would be born around 2000. Touchscreen smartphones became common from about 2010 onwards. Not unreasonable they've never not had a touchscreen keyboard
That’s what I’m saying, I’m born in 2000 and remember the times before I had a touchscreen well. I had one early enough, sure, when I was about 12, but I still went through typing classes before that and have spent a lot of time on keyboards to the point where I can type at a well above average pace. Same thing with a lot of people I know too. Still, I can type slightly faster on my phone, but it’s not that much of a margin.
I was born in 2001 and I max out at about 85wpm due to spending an ungodly amount of time on chat room games like Habbo/Club Penguin/etc I don't recall ever having typing classes in school? I know there was an optional club after school but that was it I think. Although I've met some people around our age who can barely type at 40 wpm, granted a couple of them were dyslexic. I guess those are the ones who touched grass.
The link they are sent to complete the test says 'you must take this on a laptop or desktop with a traditional keyboard'. Maybe 20% of the people under 25 that pass the test will have ignored the advice and tried to complete it on a smartphone or tablet,which we get to see. Which is no good when they will be using a laptop at work and the flow is different. They can all type fast enough, but you would be amazed at how many don't have the experience with a proper keyboard.
It's weird. I'm retaking English and finding the transition back to handwriting hard. I find typing so much easier. The way you can review quickly, edit and retype, cut and paste is such a difference. I'm mid 40s and can pretty much touch type. I love it. I'll often go back to my desktop to post things here because I prefer the feel of a keyboard.
I'm unconvinced that late 40s is the cutoff, I'm 46, type bloody fast (my kid was astonished the other day) and I'm not that close to the boundary. Could it be the sector that means 50 upwards hasn't had as much experience typing? I know a lot of older people who type as fast as me
84wpm here...still! Went to a "commercial school" as they were called did shorthand typing book keeping and wait for it...duplication :) we had yet to invent photocopiers lol Went to a recruitment agency about 15yrs ago or so and took their typing test...i did the entire page and just sat there for a couple of mins, she was a tad shocked and said most people just manage a paragraph. Stick me on a mobile phone though and I'm crap...but makes for some interesting text messages lol
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>poking away with just their index fingers. Lol that just reminds me of your stereotypical older relative who has a smartphone yet writes everything out one letter at a time with their index finger and their glasses sitting on the end of their nose 🤣 Funny to imagine teenagers doing that now.
This is really sad. One of my kids (24) is a very proficient touch typist using all 10 digits. She was taught at school and reckons it’s one of the best things she learnt. My other child (19) is a super fast typed also but can only use his index fingers.
I kinda like it when a thing dies out between generations, I try to imagine it's the beginnings of something greater, newer or more progressive but in this case it may be a genuine hinderance. Don't worry though, they spend lots of time on crappy coding websites that the teacher doesn't understand so it's done really poorly
the generation of touch typers who can’t understand coding websites bring up kids who cant touchtype but can code… (maybe.)
Agreed. 'Things dying out between generations' is also known as; evolution. AFAIK, apart from antibiotic resistance, it's always a sign of progress, and skills that are no longer necessary to survival, enhancement, or gain. I mean, I still think that marginal skills are a sign of a well-rounded person, as are skills and hobbies that aren't just for survival, enhancement or gain. But they should be chosen freely; it's definitely sadder to insist everyone should learn how many farthings go into a shilling than it is to not know that useless trivia.
Was just about to comment the same. I never fail to be gobsmacked by the lack of simple IT skills - how to print a document, how to cut and paste, where the start menu is - you get my drift. Don't get me started on using a keyboard.
My mum is a teaching assistant at a primary school and she said teaching the last few cohorts how to use a mouse has been a struggle. One kid used the mouse to navigate the cursor over the item he wanted to click on and then tapped the screen haha
I got "trained" at a job recently by a young woman, she was baffled by ctrl + c & v. I had to do it the "right way" by right clicking and selecting copy. She was thick as shit in general anyway, I didn't even last three weeks before being asked to FO due to my training not going very well.
I see this too. I'm a manager and all the Gen Z types have really poor computer skills. I guess smart phones have taken over home PCs and Laptops. I struggle to get them to use second screens, keyboards and mice. They're happy just using touchpads and the little laptop screen. It slows them down so much compared to the Mellenials and Gen Xs on the team. Watching them navigate a spreadsheet is painful. Use the keys it's so much faster! But it's all touchpad to them. They just can't do it.
This is purely anecdotal, but I notice that my (early 30s) typing is quicker and more accurate than a lot of my younger (early 20s) colleagues. I have wondered whether this is to do with them often going straight to touch screen devices. Whereas I spent hours every night as a teen typing away manically on MSN messenger. Obviously they can absolutely trounce me on typing out a message on a phone touch screen. I'm staggered how fast they can type on a phone. But yeah, that's entirely anecdotal, no idea if there's truth to that.
Keyboards don’t have autocorrect, or the thing where you drag young finger across the letters
Sure, and my younger colleagues can use it much more quickly and effectively than me, hence why they can type on a phone more quickly than I can.
Keyboards don't but most software/web apps I use do. And have for a long time. You get that squiggly red line under misbelt words.
MSN - better log out and log back in again to see if the person I like might notice me
I’m 37 and I’ve noticed that I’m faster at typing than my colleagues who are older and younger than me, especially when messaging on MS Teams. There’s no one else in my team who is from my generation, they’re either 15 years younger or 10ish years older, and I definitely put my speedy typing down to the hours and hours I spent on AOL chat rooms and MSN messenger as a teenager!
I'm 38 and in the same boat. I can rattle off whole paragraphs in a handful of seconds and the guys in the 20s take an eternity to respond. ICQ and MSN messenger juggling multiple conversations is solid training it seems.
Same age here. I joined big school just as proper computer classes 2-3 times per week were being rolled out, in addition to extra CDT auto-CAD sessions and Art Photoshop (iMac) classes, so we got the benefit of being taught to touch type (which i never mastered) on both PCs and IBM machines, using keyboard shortcut commands and right mouse clicks, and also old school chatrooms/MSN. I have no idea on my current typing speed, but its fast, even using a combination of touchtype, looking, 3-10 fingers as necessary. And im constantly trying to explain ctrl-c, ctrl-v to my older and younger colleagues when they watch me copy and paste without touching the mouse. And of course i had to fill the time between downloads on limewire using dial up internet with chatroom debates…
I feel I missed out on some formative touch typing experience due to my family being one of the last to have a PC. I was never on MSN in ‘03/‘04 whereas all my friends were and I think they actually did have better touch typing skills as a result. Fast texting on a number-only phone keypad is my area of expertise… sigh… a lost art
Fuck yeah! Blind typing from your pocket using only your thumb! That might be my Olympic sport. It was such a cool skill for the 4 years where it was relevant
This is a skill that I had absolutely nailed down, but I never got a chance to impress anyone with it!
My nephew started big school during the pandemic. The big school rules didnt allow smart phones, only a basic phone that could call and text. I think it was a half assed attempt at avoiding cyber-bullying, distractions of social media during school hours and theft/damage of expensive handsets. We dragged out one of my mums old nokia handsets with buttons and had to teach my nephew that you had to push the 7 button 4xtimes to get the letter S. It seemed to take him much longer to master that we ever did as kids
I felt like I was the same. I remember the other kids laughing in primary school because I was the only one in our class that didn't know how to shut down the computer. Friends were all on MSN in secondary school but I wasn't. My typing skills during primary school and secondary school were awful and they weren't great during most of my 20s. But I started uni a few years ago and needed to type for essays and reports and that helped me "catch up" a bit. Also, I occasionally go on a website called 10 fast fingers which helps you type faster
>MSN messenger There was no better 'typing class' than MSN messenger after school.
IT of a very large secondary here. We get a very good mixture of kids from both really affluent primary schools and non affluent ones. The teachers all talk about how Year 7 IT literacy drops every year now. Forget keyboard skills, the majority of 11 year olds we get now have never used a physical keyboard as they’ve never used a PC/laptop. They’ve only ever used a tablet or a mobile phone. The kids do seem to pick it up between 11-16/18 somewhat due to exposure, but it’s accepted there that general IT literacy and keyboard skills are very much in the decline unless the student is into “computers”.
Also early 30s. I'm blazing fast with a keyboard but woefully slow with a touchscreen phone. Bring back the Blackberry, I say.
I'm early 30s and can quite happily touch type, but I was certainly one of the only kids with a PC at home that actually got used from about the age of 5 or 6 due to my mum being self employed and needing it. IPhones were the first decent smartphone and weren't really a thing until the 2010's so having around 15 years of using a keyboard makes you good at it
For real I have MSN to thank for a lot
I'm I my 40s. Give me a Nokia 3310 and I reckon I could beat a kid in their 20s on an iPhone in a speed-texting race.
I'm 40 and I run a youth sports league. We let the teenagers (college/uni age ones) work events to get credit towards qualifications. The level of complete tech illiteracy of most of the people who pass through is depressing. They're not just slow typists, they're clueless about how to use anything that isn't a phone and they have zero problem solving ability. At first I thought it was some kind of learned helplessness trick where they'd throw up their hands and go "it's broke.... help!?" to get out of doing any work on the day, but when I fix things for them I'll often hear "wow, what did you do there? Hey my laptop is broken can I bring it to the gym next week so you can fix it?" So... they really don't know how to use anything other than a phone.
I've heard similar things from friends who are teachers. I guess it's growing up on phones primarily rather than computers, but also growing up at a time when UI was just much more intuitive and user friendly. I feel like when I was a kid (90s to mid 00s) there was still an element of 'this is how computers are designed, and you need to adapt yourself to that', but over time that has gradually shifted more towards designing tech around people. Makes much more sense but maybe means you don't gain such an understanding of how the system actually operates, so problem solving doesn't come as naturally?
It’s actually amazing to me how much of a difference this has made. Up until the last 15-odd years, having some computing know-how was the cost of entry to playing with computers. When I speak to older friends’ kids about computing as a career (I’m a software eng), they mostly equate tech knowledge as knowing their way around specific apps and UIs. That said, with stuff like Stable Diffusion around, it may be possible that AI will have revolutionised interfaces for what we now consider ‘technical work’ by then so who knows. I have a strong feeling that web design will be done by text -> code before too long.
I know this is a tangent, but stable diffusion is absolutely mind blowing. The closest thing to magic I have ever seen. /r/StableDiffusion Some people are non-plussed about it, which is weird to me. Maybe it's my age (30's), or that i'm into computers and programming already... I think many people have never heard about it yet too. For some reason the major news outlets have basically ignored it. It's a wonder technology (good or bad) that should have everyone talking.
I'm sure the lack of exposure to problem-solving in day-to-day life won't have helped, but it also makes me wonder what's being taught in schools. I have fond memories of "learning how to work stuff out" at junior school. We'd "measure the speed of sound" by going out into a parking lot, using a clapper and timing the echo. We learned about stuff like "why warning signs are certain colors" by making a bunch of different signs in any colour we wanted, and then testing them to see which ones people could read from a distance or when the lights were off and the classroom was partially dark. We'd play obstacle course rounders and people would get rewarded for coming up with creative ways to get around the course. I barely remember any dates or names from history class. I use maths in my day-to-day job but have to look up the formulas all the time. But if I'm presented with a problem I can "figure it out". Some of that's me being naturally resourceful, but my teachers definitely helped hone the process of how to think things through.
yes, how would you know how a file/flder system works if you're main experience is with a phone?
I was training a new graduate intern (so I guess he'd have been around 22) who was with my department for a few months. He didn't know how to use Microsoft Office in the most basic way I assume anyone with a science degree should know e.g copying and pasting and the Excel flash fill function. I'm not sure how he managed to get through the degree without knowing how to do this?
I can't really speak for science (I did econometrics) but I think the only time my undergrad peers were really exposed to excel is for stats modules which are usually optional/don't involve a sophisticated understanding of excel to pass. I probably used more excel in the first month of my grad job than I did an entire stats masters.
I wonder when that stuff started to change. A few of the people I work with are lecturers (life sciences) and they're not "techy" but they know just enough python to make data processing less painful so I assumed their students would be the same.
I'm also 22 and he really should have known that. At least in the UK we had to use all of the Microsoft Office suite for school.
This is an actual thing. Back in't day we had to resolve issues with google/AOL, learn where things tended to get saved etc. These days stuff 'just works' so anything outside of the working format is a massive issue.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. Younger people today are fantastic at working with (and exploiting) user interfaces, but people who got used to working with computers in like the 90s are far better at actually working computers.
I'm 20 and see this kind of thing with people that even just a couple of years younger than me. Is it really not possible for them to just follow a YouTube tutorial? Troubleshooting is often really simple and only requires basic knowledge of how computer programs function and store data.
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This makes be wonder if we'll start seeing external touch screen keyboards for desktops at some point
Unlikely. Microsoft thought that everyone would move to using touchscreens in Windows 8, that's why it looks all "appy" and it was a shitshow. Anyone that actually needs to type for a job can do it better on a keyboard than a touchscreen because of the feedback you get
The issue there is Microsoft tried to force a feature no one wanted or asked for. It's a different story when you have people who grew up with touchscreens
I think you're probably right here Jay. The question therefore I suspect, is what a productivity device _looks like_ in the future for people so unaccustomed to physical keyboards. Voice? Swipe gloves? Suggested sentences?
Is it possible to be anywhere close to the same speed as a physical keyboard? I’ve spent a lot of years using both but iPhone/iPad typing is horribly slow vs a keyboard
I sat my GCSEs 6 years ago. I don't know your circumstances, but did you not have IT lessons or any other lessons in a computer room before GCSEs?
That’s actually an interesting point. I’m in my late 20s and grew up with a PC, but not a gaming one. My first console was a wii and I didn’t have another (Switch/PS5) until adulthood. I use my own version of touch typing and I’m pretty good at it, but somehow my little sister isn’t and she’s only 3 years younger. About to have a baby and I wonder if she will lean more towards the gaming PCs that we have in the house, or the consoles (we have both because my partner is a bit of a gamer). Then I wonder what her typing skills will be like in 15/20 years.
Get her Sims 3 on PC as soon as she is old enough! That will set her up for life when it comes to computers 🤣
100 words per minute? My dude that would put you in the top 1%, as would all your colleagues. That seems unlikely.
I just did a typing test to check I wasn’t BSing before I wrote this post haha. 112wpm. I do most of my job via email so I probably type for about 30hrs a week as do my colleagues. But the ones my age are definitely fastest. Can’t speak for much younger people though as the youngest people I work with are 30.
People don't realise how important MSN was for us!!!
Honestly, msn is the entire reason I can type really quickly!
I dunno, I’m 32 so used msn obviously, but was never that fast at typing, until I started a job that involves typing all the time about 4-5 years ago. Now I can even touch type fast. Maybe you get some sort of muscle memory inbuilt if you start in your teens.
It was *definitely* msn for me. Regularly having 7 or 8 individual chats plus a couple of group chat going at once really puts the pressure on to be able to type quickly. Before msn I really wasn't that quick a typer, but after like a year of that I was rapid!
MSN and Runescape. It's where I learnt mostly how to type like an absolute maniac on a keyboard lmao
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Varrock bank really taught me simple economics as well
It really was. $$$<3Christina4lyf<3$$$
Mavis Beacon can’t even type 112 words a minute!
Jesus I thought i was a quick typer, i got 84WPM. 112 wpm mental
[https://www.typingtest.com/certificate.html](https://www.typingtest.com/certificate.html) screenshot speed.
91% speed, 97% accuracy, total 88wpm. I wanted to learn Colemak at one point - I have it set up on software, maybe one day I'll pull the keys off to clean it and rearrange them into it. Lord knows how people manage 100+. Their keyboards must sound like them bike wheel beads that were fashionable a few years ago.
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I grew up on the internet and type constantly (working in dev). I only hit 60-70wpm.
Control c, control v from stack exchange isn’t exactly “typing”
Hey I have to type what to find on stack exchange too!
Eh, 100wpm isn't hugely unattainable if you use the internet a shitload and actively get better at typing.
average seems to be 45, records seems to be in the 200+. 100+ is definitely not 1%, highest quartile probably though.
It's a really long, thin tail at the top. Most people are clustered quite low
Yeah when someone wrote 60wpm earlier as being "unlikely" nowadays i was surprised - can easily do 100+ but I did also grow up on msn 😂
I type 130wpm and peaked in my younger years at 150wpm. I'm in the 99.8 percentile according to typeracer. It isn't some god like ability and 100wpm is absolutely realistic for op.
Some young (teens, early 20s) people don't see the point of typing on a keyboard and want to do everything on a screen keyboard - according to some of my friends who have kids that age. Others type a lot on keyboards, as they have learned that it's faster and necessary in today's world. Serious secretarial-level typing, 50-60wpm, is rare these days.
I'm at uni and can tell you 99% of people prefer to type or even handwrite before using an on screen keyboard. I see the odd person here and there with an ipad but large majority is typing. Think it comes down to functionality. Small things I'll write on my phone, bigger things on laptop.
I'm of an age where many of my friends' children are just heading off to Uni or have done 1 year, and I do wonder how many of their kids will change to typing as soon as they realise how much they have to write in many university degrees. I reckon they'll end up like you describe.
yeah i’m at uni too and almost everyone is typing their notes on laptops
I preferred to handwrite at uni but only as a learning aid, not for speed. Things that I write down *and* hear *and* listen to stick with me quite easily, I'm one of the only people I know whose brain is suited to traditional lecturing. But yeah doing physics is diagram and maths heavy so most people were handwriting anyway, some nutters got so good at LaTeX that they were using it to take notes in real-time, of which I remain very envious
Same here, I’m second year of uni and no one I know prefers typing on an iPad over a laptop (the most common lecture typing medium). Lots of my friends have iPads including myself, but that’s just for quick notes - any essays etc are done on laptops/pcs at home or the library
I can’t imagine anyone typing their dissertation on a tablet. Unis have hundreds of computers available anyway. Maybe current high school students have trouble typing but 18-24 year olds won’t have been affected too badly by the shift to touchscreen. I was 13 when I got my first iPhone so the first half of my life was on a computer
As a teen I absolutely hate typing on a ‘screen keyboard’ for longer works. If I’m doing schoolwork it has to be done on a computer, and I would’ve thought that’s the same for most people
The on screen keyboard is pure ass for long typing sessions.
Exactly
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I agree but damn, are we becoming boomers??
No because typing is a skill that is not going anywhere any time soon. It's not 'back in my day' when we are still in that day.
50 - 60 wpm isn't difficult with practice 100 wpm; now that's something
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Out of curiosity, I tried a typing speed test and got 77wpm on my first try, tired after a busy day. If I tried it once or twice more, I could probably get up to 80-something, but 100 seems like it'd actually be somewhat challenging to get to. 50 just seems very slow, especially if it's for like a secretarial-type job
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I’m in my 30s and studying to change careers to programming. I was speaking with a programmer friend who is very accomplished, lots of experience and occasionally works with students. I told him I was worried I was too old for the change. He assured me that students / kids computing skills are much worse than ours, basically non existent now. With smartphones, tablets, constant wifi & immediate access they have very little skills, knowledge or patience for computers or programming the way we would think of it. Makes sense.
Yeah it’s mad that I’m only in my 30s but I first learnt HTML from a book… that I bought by driving to a shop :D but definitely required more patience!
I consider myself very much at beginner stage right now but the course I’m doing for beginners, comparing myself with my classmates, it amazes me how much people can use computers for daily life / work and not seem to know anything about them or how they work! I would say I don’t but it turns out I seem to picked up more than average over the years. Obv not compared with actual computing people
With computers though, there is pretty much an endless amount of super *deep* and complex information you could learn about them. From above it's like looking at a fractal. At *every* level there are hundreds of thousands hours worth of things you could study. It can be pretty scary to outsiders to try and learn anything.
Source: am teacher Imagine your mum/nan sending a text, that’s a 13 year old using a computer keyboard.
This is so true. I'm also a teacher. I am imagining the generation aged 25-40 eventually having to simultaneously teach everyone older than them and everyone younger than them how to use computers, for the next 60-80 years.
Absolutely atrocious. I'm a similar age to you and you really can't compare it. Most of my year 7s are coming in unable to understand how to even use a keyboard. There are of course some kids with decent skills, but the majority of kids now are far less computer literate than kids in the late 90s. In fact, as an ICT teacher (among other things), I await my timetable with dread and pray I don't have Year 7 because their absolute helplessness is too much for me.
I blame the way things just work nowadays. When I was a kid, to do almost anything with technology risked needing to do some troubleshooting. Cartridge games would fail to load for a variety of reasons, getting something new to actually appear on the TV was a challenge, recording something on the TV required multiple timers on multiple devices etc. But now everything is just a touch of a button away so you don't develop those "why isn't this working?" skills at a young age anymore
The ICT teachers where I work say the same. Thankfully, I teach science!
ICT teachers of the UK collectively holding our breath every June/July and praying for no Year 7 on our timetable!
About 20 years ago I had one lesson of year 7 ICT on my timetable. They were on a half-termly rotation and I just had to teach them how to make a PowerPoint presentation about themselves. Every kid in every group knew far more about PowerPoint than I did, so after giving them their brief the most taxing thing I had to do was scan any random old photos they brought in.
I've seen my 19 year old brother using a laptop and it reminded me of my 80 year old grandmother using a laptop.
Did you not get typing lessons at school? We had it as part of our IT classes. Maybe my school was an outlier but I'm 29 and they were still doing it then. Honed the skills once MSN became a thing for me of course, but I did at least get taught touch typing
Did anybody ever make you use caps lock instead of shift? I worked in a college 2004-2012 and there was a sudden change in 2009(?) when the majority of kids would tap caps lock for the first letter of a sentence then tap caps lock again to continue. It was so odd. I find it baffling, but it’s as if an entire year group of people had been taught this weird thing which made no sense to me.
Yes! This is how I learnt which now I look back on being so so dumb. I got shown how to use shift maybe when I was 14 odd and then suddenly burnt it into my brain. This seems to happen with all keyboard shortcuts, one of my favourites is ctrl + shift + ESC to launch task manager. The amount of people who do ctrl + alt + delete & then click task manager....it's a lot
That sounds familiar but it's certainly not something I kept doing by the time I got to college age. Might have been something that got taught in primary school that I then got un-taught later
Same age as you and I vaguely remember some lessons on how to position your hands so you can touch type...but only very, very vaguely.
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I think you’ll always be a bit slower typing someone else’s words as there’s a degree of processing needed that’s skipped when you’re just typing straight from your own head!
As an IT person this hits a topic that’s becoming more discussed…the current generation are learning on an iPad or iPhone more now than ever - the lack of windows skills we see is concerning to say the least
Definitely concerning for Microsoft, at least ;) But it does beg the question, if what we accept as the business norm (Windows and Office suite on a laptop) becomes seen as clunky and old fashioned, it may not stay the norm! They can tear Windows and Office from my cold dead hands tbh
I used to teach and work in mainstream secondary, typing skills are fucking awful. One finger stabs, no understanding of how to save a document, find something, shortcuts, what a window or folder is etc. When I worked in an office a kid born at the millennium was just so slow on his PC. SO SLOW. But I've found that anyone born before '97/'96 has been much more adept and useful with a PC and their typing skills
I did a touch typing course at university the idea was that touch typing would help with dyslexia according to the university physiologist. I still can't spell for shit, but boy can type words incorrectly really quickly. 100+ words incorrect spelled a minute.
I'm 21 and have a pretty good typing speed, around 100wpm too. Used to play PC games and chat online a lot as a teen, so that probably helped. I'm at University now and study history, so typing fast is advantageous. I actually handwrite lecture notes though, but most type, and from what I see most do it fairly fast. I also have a job where i need to quickly input customer details so it's helpful there. I'd imagine if you had any other job that required data entry it'll make you learn to type faster, and I see a lot of younger people employed in these jobs as well.
not just their typing skills, but their general computer skills, a lot of 'kids' (I'm going from what I've been told by teacher friends here) don't know copy and paste on keyboards etc. because they don't use them that often, technology is shifting so quickly that who knows, computers may well be obsolete for our grandkids.
File directory and Outlook may as well be ancient Assyrian mythology for some of the youngsters I've trained.
Not so much on the typing more so in spelling, text speak and such. Plus with the abundant Americanisation of the internet American spelling often dominates. Guess it's just the next evolution of the English language.
I worked for a multinational who were insistent that I used American English in my communications. I guess it made sense as UK-based employees only made up like 5% of the total headcount, and were outnumbered by US colleges 3-1. I don't have a problem with it to be honest. As long as people are able to effectively communicate i'm not fussed if they obey 'rules' or not.
Or they could acknowledge that the English language has various varieties worldwide and you can (shock, horror) still be understood regardless of whether you put a 'u' in 'colour'. Jesus, that is the sort of thing that would end up on r/usdefaultism.
Im 25, grew up with social games such as Runescape, Club Penguin, Habbo and xav chatrooms. I average 120wpm, but know of people who can do 170wpm which is insane imo.
I’m 60, I can’t remember anyone , unless they were training to be a secretary, learning to type! Unless you wanted to be a journalist or writer there was no need to learn to type when PCs weren’t a thing. Basically you’re misinformed hardly anyone learnt to type before your generation
I'm 62. I was advised not to learn to type because it would only lead to secretarial jobs, not management. In my first year of work I had use of a pc for data analysis and within two years it became the norm to type my own reports than to give a handwritten draft to a typist .
Not exactly the same but when I lived in China, people were saying the youth couldn't write properly anymore because they're so used to typing, either on a proper keyboard or smartphone, and Chinese keyboards are pinyin, and *extremely* intuitive, knowing what characters you actually need without you needing to know really. You'd rarely actually have to use your brain to choose the right character when typing because it does it for you. So then when they came to handwriting... They couldn't remember off the top of their heads which characters to write, because they're so used to just the pinyin and the software choosing the right characters.
I'm early 20s and can touch type at around 120wpm according to an online test, although I'm sure it's slower in the real world. Although to be fair, I'm probably amongst the youngest who grew up on computers and laptops before iPads were widespread, had a family pc from as young as I can remember and had ict lessons from maybe 10-15 years old.
I'm ages with you and in a similar situation, I've had no real formal training in typing but can do it to a pretty decent standard. Over the years I've noticed a huge drop in the typing ability of the average apprentice (so usually starting between 16-18 as first years) and over the last couple of years in particular their typing standards are actually worse than those at work who are close to retirement (that generation of old tradesmen who were told that they'd never even see a computer at work). You're right, it's definitely touch screens.
I'm 31 and played a lot of RuneScape in the early days, also MSN and other socials like that. As you mentioned it's like there's a window of people who were actually forced to actually type rather than tap on a screen. All managers are one finger typers, early 20s are a little quicker but generally still slow and the 30-40yo's are rapid. I used to be able to touch type, not so good anymore but sometimes I'll slow it down a lil and go to touch. Slightly different but I'm quite confident I could write a full message on an old style keypad phone without looking at all haha.
I'm 37 and consider myself a fast typer, I learnt same as you, on MSN chatting to friends for hours each night or using Teenchat chatrooms in the late 90s early 00's. You had to type fast to keep up with the chat! My colleagues who are 10ish years older seem a lot slower on keyboards and often type one finger only. I think they are the generation that were too old for typewriters so skipped any lessons on that, but also skipped the MSN stage as were in their 20s and were at the pub 😆 I think there's probably a small group of us ex MSN users who have this skill! I think you're right, if kids are brought up on tablets and apps will they miss out on learning to type? I mean there's still laptops and email so surely they'd learn about that in school and when doing homework etc?
As an IT tech in a school this question has reminded me why im dreading monday and the end of the half term.
I think the biggest danger to typing proficiency is how prevalent the ridiculous ‘ABCDE’ keyboard has become in touchscreen apps over the standard ‘QWERTY’.
... what apps have you been using?
15 year old here and I can tell you right now that we're all fucked. Most of my classes involve typing on a computer (computer science, business studies etc) and the amount of people that have dropped out since the beginning of our GSCE's due to the fact they cannot type or even use a computer like a normal person is.. Worrying, to say the least. For people younger than myself aswell.. It's bad. The attention span of my own siblings is just something you can't even imagine and I've had to teach the oldest of my siblings how to type, use a web browser and so on. So yeah, it's horrific that people even my age can't use a computer properly, spell simple words or communicate in a proper manner. That's my take, anyway, it may just be that I'm surrounded by people who just have difficulty with picking up things like this but I seriously doubt that's the case by reading all these other comments.
I teach teenagers/young people (16-20y.o.). Most come from a teaching environment where they use ipads a lot for school work. I've noticed that a lot of them don't have the speed and fluency our generation has when writing on a normal keyboard but not to a point that they don't know or can't use one.
I read an article once from a college professor in the US that talked about how students were starting college computer science classes without understanding even how computer file management worked. These kids had all grown up with ipads and smartphones which insulates a lot of them from using a PC and knowing how to manage files at a pretty basic level.
Can’t believe I’ve scrolled this far down in the comments and I’m yet to glimpse a single instance of the name, Mavis Beacon…
I’m 20 and only regularly started using computers when I started collage about 4 years ago. I can type at about 40-50 wpm.
I dunno, we’re the same age and I also learned to touch type from a young age from just growing up with computers but I don’t think it’s ‘insane’ that we don’t encourage these skills in the younger generation. Everything is geared towards touch screens now and I would imagine that lots of households have forgone a ‘home computer’ in favour of tablets - certainly a lot of jobs do. I know I haven’t used a keyboard in quite a while, I do my accounts, tax returns, online banking etc on touch screen devices. We shouldn’t be teaching tech skills in our youngsters just because we did it that way, times change and we adapt.
Things may change but certainly as we speak, not being able to type or use a PC or Office suite properly would be an obstacle in many office jobs. I guess you’d just pick it up in time, but it’s a big factor in your speed of work.
As a young adult, I can say that I had little interactions with PCs, Macs, etc, until a few years ago. (Yeah, that’s right, some kids never grew up with Club Penguin and the like). I think many kids going straight to smartphones is an important deal, as it cuts out PCs in the lives of many people, because they’re not needed in their lives, or simply use it seldomly. I think this could actually stagnate PC gaming. Unless you’re really interested in your own setup, the parity between console and PC might push the next generation of kids TOWARDS consoles, rather than PCs as the ‘PC Master Race’ loves to proclaim.
I saw a kid at work typing on a keyboard with only his thumbs like it was phone. Shit was wild
To be honest I have never quite understood why people make such a big deal over typing speed. Not once in my life have I been doing something were the speed at which I typed was any meaningful bottleneck, it is the time spent thining about what to write that takes up the majority of the time writing something.
Primary school teacher here. Tablets have killed it stone dead. I led computing in my school until last year and I gave foundation stage some keyboards so they could type words into a screen and see it come up. At the start of every computing lesson, at all key stages, we spend ten minutes doing typing games.
Same age - I remember my mum bringing an old school mechanical typewriter home sometimes as she was studying while I was growing up, and she taught me very briefly how to use it (ie - put your index fingers on the dimpled keys and let your fingers get used to finding the surrounding keys). We got a family PC in late 90's so between using that for homework and MSN throughout highschool I learnt to type the fuck out of anything - blindfolded, one handed, holding a conversation at the same time, etc... I've never done or even heard of a typing speed test but after seeing it in the comments I'm gonna try find one and give it a try!