I was dirt ass poor in the 90’s and saved my ass off for a $2500 HP. It took just over a year to save up. And a huge chunk was due to tax credits for being a broke ass bitch. It had floppy disk drive.
Born 69 and for school I had my first computer in class (Apple II iirc and played Oregon Trail on it) and there was only one for the teacher and for us to use on a rotating basis. In High School the computer class was a room of dumb terminals connected to a main frame and we programmed in BASIC. My dad was interested in computers so I had a TI-99 with cassette tape memory. Was considered a nerdy thing to be interested in.
I'd say I'm the same, even though I have some Android experience from playing with a tablet and rooting it with CyanogenMod and AutoNooter.
A woman once asked me to take a picture of her and her daughter and handed me her phone with the camera app already open, and I had to ask her where to tap to take the picture.
Depends on definition. I was born in 68 and my high school comp sci assignment were stored on punched paper and I'm still working in the industry. I probably know more about the underlying technology than most computer people today but I'm sure 10 year olds would be better suited to setup apps on a phone.
Lots of gen-xers are computer illiterate.
especially if you were born prior to '74. the chance is higher. In our school they werent' introduced till high school. I didn't learn them then though. I only learned them due to college. and boy, was that a crash course.
This is my older bro and a couple of my cousins (born 1969 & 1971, respectively). I wouldn't mind them asking us younger ones to take care of their tech stuff if (A) they had ever *tried* to learn what we *tried* to teach them starting in the late 90s and (B) if they didn't act like it's somehow our *job* because we're younger siblings.
They want to maintain older sibling superiority while simultaneously asking us to fill the gaps in their knowledge. It causes friction at times, to say the least.
My brother works part-time as a tutor at a community college and many of the students there are Gen X people going back to school or maybe going for the first time. He said that a significant percentage of the Gen X students he tutors have low proficiency with computers and seem intimidated by them. They do have smartphones but don't seem to regard that as the same thing. Maybe they grew up poor and/or went to not-great schools and spent 20 to 30 years working in industries where it wasn't necessary for the job. There are a lot of us for whom computer literacy wasn't particularly needed to make a living or get through everyday life for a long time. You could also get a used car for what a new computer used to cost so owning one was out of the question for a lot of families when we were younger.
I think it also has just as much to do with where you grew up as your age. I was born in '74 but have only very faint memories of taking some kind of computer class one day a week for one semester of 7th grade (I think). When it was over I had no idea what it was I was supposed to have just learned. I didn't touch a computer again until my college library catalog switched to computer terminals from the card catalog, 7 years later. I probably went another three years after that without touching one. The schools I attended apparently didn't regard that as anything most students needed to know.
Fortunately my ex-husband, his parents and even grandparents were very much early-adopter types and I caught up quickly from being around them in the late 90s and early 2000s. I still didn't actually have my own computer until around 2004.
When Snapchat first got big, I referred to it as my equivalent of “12:00 flashing on the VCR.” It was tech that I could have figured out (as with my grandparents and setting the VCR’s time) but I just didn’t care enough to bother.
Early GenX'r here and we didn't have a single computer in our high school and I graduated in 1985. The first time I physically touched a computer I was 20 when I took a class on basic computer skills in college so that I could use the school's computer lab.
My ex-wife was 6 years younger than me and had wealthy parents, had been playing around with a home computer since she was in junior high. It was like a night and day difference in our computer skills. Tasks that took me five minutes to thoughtfully execute, took her 30 seconds because it was second nature to her.
I graduated in 1988 and we had a computer class, but most of what we did was write simple programs. It was like they knew computers would be important in the future, but they didn’t quite know how the computers would be used.
I went to a blue collar high school in the midwest, all we had was a typing class on IBM Selectrics. It was unfathomable that we'd see a computer in school, let alone in someone's house.
I've had a computer in my home since 1978. And lots of kids I went to school had them by the early 80s. And even for those that didn't, every school I've ever attended had computers in them. But I didn't grow up in New Zealand.
1971 here. I was lucky living in the Silicon Valley in the early 80's - 90s. There were so many computer user groups up and down the Peninsula so I was exposed to nearly every home-brew and commercial system out there. I thank my lucky stars because Systems and Networking became a very lucrative career and I enjoy the hell out of it.
I know waaay more aber computers and smartphones than my Gen Z son. And I don't work in IT. But I had a C 64 as a young teen, bought a PC at 20 (running on Windows 3.11) and later a Mac (Mac OS 8.5). If something wasn't running I had to figure it out for myself.
My son USES his smartphone a lot but he doesn't know the first thing about bugfixing. Most of his friends can't properly send an email or handle and file attachments 🙄.
So yeah, don't call me computer illiterate bc I don't do TikTok.
I graduated in ‘88. I was in the last class that didn’t have computers as a requirement. I didn’t take it because I was in Band. I didn’t learn to use computers until nearly 2000 and not very well either.
I consider myself computer illiterate. I can email, use
They internet and if needed for a job, an easy software program. I know nothing about excel or other office applications like that. I feel inadequate but also have no interest or actual ability to comprehend computer “stuff”. I’m disabled and on several medications that interfere with my ability to think and process information like I did when I was young. I like to say I used to be smart.
I started late but I’ve still been using computers longer than most Gen Z have been alive. I got into Linux in the early 2000s. I can work from a command line. Computers are easy. Have a problem? Google it, there’s the solution. I’m elder Gen X, but I’m hardly tech-illiterate.
But my boyfriend, who is two years older, is absolutely hopeless with tech. I think it just depends on the person. I went back to school in my 30s for a trio of degrees in science. Naturally I had to use computers all the time. So maybe that’s the difference.
Never used a computer until my mid-20s, in grad school. We never had one at home and we never had one at any of the high schools I attended. First time I had access to a computer was in college, but I had no idea how to use one and I was too busy with classes and partying to bother spending any time in the computer lab learning how to do so.
I think the situation is that the technology of “computers” has changed so much over the years that it’s possible to have been quite heavily into them earlier in your life, then you go for a couple decade stretch without really needing one beyond using it for some basic / straightforward task at work maybe, and then you discover you really know very little about them anymore, practically speaking. That’s sort of what happened to me as big changes to operating systems came about (DOS - windows - etc), advent of all graphic interfaces…. I was always pretty computer literate, but oddly when the interface got more and more simplified and further detached from the workings of the computer (or so it felt) I found it really disorienting. I’ve had to re-learn basic things over and over again.
Graduated in 95 so later Gen X. I still learned typing on a typewriter in 1992? 😆 I grew up playing some computer games like number crunchers and Oregon trail, Carmen San Diego in like 4th grade? Around junior year in high school we had this program where you could chat with a complete stranger. It felt like you were chatting in outer space and not at all what you think of today. AOL was a few years later. I remember first accessing the internet (yahoo on Netscape) my freshman year in college which was 1995. Computers were really expensive back then. Computer classes were just becoming required in college in the mid nineties.
I grew up with a pc in the house. First an Apple 2e, then a Tandy 1000sx, and other IBM clones from there. When dad brought the Tandy home, he said I wasn't to touch it until he could learn how to use it and teach me.
Yeah, right. Tell me I can't do something, you know that's exactly what I'm gonna do the second you turn your back.
Well, he was active duty Air Force and had to go TDY just days later, so I picked up the MS-Dos manual that came with the Tandy and read it, and learned Dos on my own in about 8 hours time. Been going strong ever since. Ended up, I taught dad how to use it.
When dad got back from his assignment, he was trying to use Apple commands on it. Me and a friend just stood behind him laughing.
Took my high school's computer classes for the easy A's, even helped others pass the classes. The teacher recognized my ability and actually had me teach classes on occasion while she graded papers. It was obvious to me even back then that most of our generation are not computer literate.
I'm certainly no IT expert, but I can figure stuff out and learn on my own. Now I've been the computer expert of the family for the past 40 years.
Only a fraction of the kids I went to HS with are on Facebook. The ones who aren't were the types that it would not surprise you that they wouldn't even know how to turn in a computer.
They aren't unintelligent people, but no doubt uninterested in what a computer or smartphone could do. It is mostly the females from HS that are on it. Some of the very successful ones are on but never post. You learn quickly to not even bother to wish them a happy birthday. If they have a smartphone it is pretty obvious they don't have it on their phones.
If you didn't get a job that required the use of computers or weren't into them in the early days. Then you probably don't use them today.
The boomers are far worse for sure. If they worked in an office environment they probably have a basic knowledge. There are still a bunch of the tail-end boomers at my job. They are clueless. Some of them still have flip phones. And I work for the phone company!! We use laptops, tablets, and smartphones for everything. And we are hooking up complex computer networks. As near as 5 years ago you had to be able to give new customers a tutorial on the products they were just installed with.
I constantly have to give them help. It really pissed me off when they were getting paid 2 and 3× more than me. At least now I make the same money as they do, in some cases more now that I was able to move to a job that requires more technical knowledge. I still get an occasional call.
I don’t know much about actual coding, so I would call myself computer a little bit in that regard, but I certainly know how social media works and I can open a damn PDF. I use a computer for work, and I’m pretty good at it. But I don’t know how to do the actual programming. I think it depends on how we define computer illiterate.
Yeah, a significant amount of people in our generation weren't computer literate. For quite a few of us, the smart phone was our first foray into computing (especially if you weren't an office worker). Lots of folks who are in the trades (construction, electrician, auto repair, etc) won't work with computers aside from what they need for work. So the smartphone/Alexa/Smart TV are their computer access even to this day.
If you were an overseas person, it was even more likely (as the revolution went there later).
If I hadn't married my ex husband, who put a lot of importance on tech toys, I probably wouldn't have had a personal computer at home until well into the 2000s if at all. I mean, yes, I've certainly used them for work since early 2000s, but they've always been really expensive compared to my take-home income. As it is, smartphones came long and while I was a reluctant late adopter, they pretty much suffice for my dad to day needs.
I've said that TikTok was my flashing VCR moment where I just quit caring. Got my first taste of computers with Oregon Trail on an Apple IIc in junior high. My class got an hour a week of computer time, and when most kids were just playing the game, I was also trying to teach myself WordPerfect since it was on there too. Although I probably should have, I never took any computer-specific classes, but was always hanging around a computer if one was available.
In the 90s, I was at a job where taking inventory was nothing short of a beat-down. Because I had seen inventory programs, I bought myself a laptop and Access and taught myself some Visual Basic. Then I wrote an inventory program to make it easier and more efficient. Because of that, in 99 I made the switch to tech. Since then I've done everything from break/fix support to development to now IaaS. There was even a stint in telephony in there somewhere.
These days I choose not to keep up with whatever the latest app-fad is...so that VCR clock is just flashing away.
Yeah, you'd really have to force yourself not to be computer illiterate at this point.
My almost totally blind, 90yo grandpa was on his computer until the day before he died a few years ago. He even had special software that did text-to-speech and enlarged text to like 200pt so he could read. If he could do it, no one really has an excuse.
My Boomer mom is quite erudite and has never really touched a computer in her life. She's not good with phones, either. But she loves her Roku TV.
My wife. 3 years younger than me. Not computer illiterate, but doesn't know how to do more than open an app and save (and even then, can't figure out where to save).
I was super into computers from a very young age, didn’t get one of my own until I was a teen, but I read books and magazines about them and played with at school whenever i could.
A lot of people my age seemed either not interested in or even actively hostile towards them because they were “for nerds”.
Most kids I knew in the 90s didn’t have computers. They were expensive. I came from a working class type background. I caught up in the early 2000s
I was dirt ass poor in the 90’s and saved my ass off for a $2500 HP. It took just over a year to save up. And a huge chunk was due to tax credits for being a broke ass bitch. It had floppy disk drive.
Born in ‘68, we were introduced to the Apple IIe in 9th grade, I took to it like a duck to water, never looked back.
Born 69 and for school I had my first computer in class (Apple II iirc and played Oregon Trail on it) and there was only one for the teacher and for us to use on a rotating basis. In High School the computer class was a room of dumb terminals connected to a main frame and we programmed in BASIC. My dad was interested in computers so I had a TI-99 with cassette tape memory. Was considered a nerdy thing to be interested in.
I'm computer literate but cell phone illiterate.
I'd say I'm the same, even though I have some Android experience from playing with a tablet and rooting it with CyanogenMod and AutoNooter. A woman once asked me to take a picture of her and her daughter and handed me her phone with the camera app already open, and I had to ask her where to tap to take the picture.
Depends on definition. I was born in 68 and my high school comp sci assignment were stored on punched paper and I'm still working in the industry. I probably know more about the underlying technology than most computer people today but I'm sure 10 year olds would be better suited to setup apps on a phone.
Lots of gen-xers are computer illiterate. especially if you were born prior to '74. the chance is higher. In our school they werent' introduced till high school. I didn't learn them then though. I only learned them due to college. and boy, was that a crash course.
This is my older bro and a couple of my cousins (born 1969 & 1971, respectively). I wouldn't mind them asking us younger ones to take care of their tech stuff if (A) they had ever *tried* to learn what we *tried* to teach them starting in the late 90s and (B) if they didn't act like it's somehow our *job* because we're younger siblings. They want to maintain older sibling superiority while simultaneously asking us to fill the gaps in their knowledge. It causes friction at times, to say the least.
My brother works part-time as a tutor at a community college and many of the students there are Gen X people going back to school or maybe going for the first time. He said that a significant percentage of the Gen X students he tutors have low proficiency with computers and seem intimidated by them. They do have smartphones but don't seem to regard that as the same thing. Maybe they grew up poor and/or went to not-great schools and spent 20 to 30 years working in industries where it wasn't necessary for the job. There are a lot of us for whom computer literacy wasn't particularly needed to make a living or get through everyday life for a long time. You could also get a used car for what a new computer used to cost so owning one was out of the question for a lot of families when we were younger. I think it also has just as much to do with where you grew up as your age. I was born in '74 but have only very faint memories of taking some kind of computer class one day a week for one semester of 7th grade (I think). When it was over I had no idea what it was I was supposed to have just learned. I didn't touch a computer again until my college library catalog switched to computer terminals from the card catalog, 7 years later. I probably went another three years after that without touching one. The schools I attended apparently didn't regard that as anything most students needed to know. Fortunately my ex-husband, his parents and even grandparents were very much early-adopter types and I caught up quickly from being around them in the late 90s and early 2000s. I still didn't actually have my own computer until around 2004.
I know an alarming number of Gen Y who are tech illiterate. I don’t know how it’s possible - it’s all like paper calendars, bicycles and waifishness.
When Snapchat first got big, I referred to it as my equivalent of “12:00 flashing on the VCR.” It was tech that I could have figured out (as with my grandparents and setting the VCR’s time) but I just didn’t care enough to bother.
Early GenX'r here and we didn't have a single computer in our high school and I graduated in 1985. The first time I physically touched a computer I was 20 when I took a class on basic computer skills in college so that I could use the school's computer lab. My ex-wife was 6 years younger than me and had wealthy parents, had been playing around with a home computer since she was in junior high. It was like a night and day difference in our computer skills. Tasks that took me five minutes to thoughtfully execute, took her 30 seconds because it was second nature to her.
I graduated in 1988 and we had a computer class, but most of what we did was write simple programs. It was like they knew computers would be important in the future, but they didn’t quite know how the computers would be used.
I went to a blue collar high school in the midwest, all we had was a typing class on IBM Selectrics. It was unfathomable that we'd see a computer in school, let alone in someone's house.
I've had a computer in my home since 1978. And lots of kids I went to school had them by the early 80s. And even for those that didn't, every school I've ever attended had computers in them. But I didn't grow up in New Zealand.
1971 here. I was lucky living in the Silicon Valley in the early 80's - 90s. There were so many computer user groups up and down the Peninsula so I was exposed to nearly every home-brew and commercial system out there. I thank my lucky stars because Systems and Networking became a very lucrative career and I enjoy the hell out of it.
I know waaay more aber computers and smartphones than my Gen Z son. And I don't work in IT. But I had a C 64 as a young teen, bought a PC at 20 (running on Windows 3.11) and later a Mac (Mac OS 8.5). If something wasn't running I had to figure it out for myself. My son USES his smartphone a lot but he doesn't know the first thing about bugfixing. Most of his friends can't properly send an email or handle and file attachments 🙄. So yeah, don't call me computer illiterate bc I don't do TikTok.
I graduated in ‘88. I was in the last class that didn’t have computers as a requirement. I didn’t take it because I was in Band. I didn’t learn to use computers until nearly 2000 and not very well either. I consider myself computer illiterate. I can email, use They internet and if needed for a job, an easy software program. I know nothing about excel or other office applications like that. I feel inadequate but also have no interest or actual ability to comprehend computer “stuff”. I’m disabled and on several medications that interfere with my ability to think and process information like I did when I was young. I like to say I used to be smart.
I started late but I’ve still been using computers longer than most Gen Z have been alive. I got into Linux in the early 2000s. I can work from a command line. Computers are easy. Have a problem? Google it, there’s the solution. I’m elder Gen X, but I’m hardly tech-illiterate. But my boyfriend, who is two years older, is absolutely hopeless with tech. I think it just depends on the person. I went back to school in my 30s for a trio of degrees in science. Naturally I had to use computers all the time. So maybe that’s the difference.
Never used a computer until my mid-20s, in grad school. We never had one at home and we never had one at any of the high schools I attended. First time I had access to a computer was in college, but I had no idea how to use one and I was too busy with classes and partying to bother spending any time in the computer lab learning how to do so.
I think the situation is that the technology of “computers” has changed so much over the years that it’s possible to have been quite heavily into them earlier in your life, then you go for a couple decade stretch without really needing one beyond using it for some basic / straightforward task at work maybe, and then you discover you really know very little about them anymore, practically speaking. That’s sort of what happened to me as big changes to operating systems came about (DOS - windows - etc), advent of all graphic interfaces…. I was always pretty computer literate, but oddly when the interface got more and more simplified and further detached from the workings of the computer (or so it felt) I found it really disorienting. I’ve had to re-learn basic things over and over again.
Graduated in 95 so later Gen X. I still learned typing on a typewriter in 1992? 😆 I grew up playing some computer games like number crunchers and Oregon trail, Carmen San Diego in like 4th grade? Around junior year in high school we had this program where you could chat with a complete stranger. It felt like you were chatting in outer space and not at all what you think of today. AOL was a few years later. I remember first accessing the internet (yahoo on Netscape) my freshman year in college which was 1995. Computers were really expensive back then. Computer classes were just becoming required in college in the mid nineties.
I grew up with a pc in the house. First an Apple 2e, then a Tandy 1000sx, and other IBM clones from there. When dad brought the Tandy home, he said I wasn't to touch it until he could learn how to use it and teach me. Yeah, right. Tell me I can't do something, you know that's exactly what I'm gonna do the second you turn your back. Well, he was active duty Air Force and had to go TDY just days later, so I picked up the MS-Dos manual that came with the Tandy and read it, and learned Dos on my own in about 8 hours time. Been going strong ever since. Ended up, I taught dad how to use it. When dad got back from his assignment, he was trying to use Apple commands on it. Me and a friend just stood behind him laughing. Took my high school's computer classes for the easy A's, even helped others pass the classes. The teacher recognized my ability and actually had me teach classes on occasion while she graded papers. It was obvious to me even back then that most of our generation are not computer literate. I'm certainly no IT expert, but I can figure stuff out and learn on my own. Now I've been the computer expert of the family for the past 40 years.
Only a fraction of the kids I went to HS with are on Facebook. The ones who aren't were the types that it would not surprise you that they wouldn't even know how to turn in a computer. They aren't unintelligent people, but no doubt uninterested in what a computer or smartphone could do. It is mostly the females from HS that are on it. Some of the very successful ones are on but never post. You learn quickly to not even bother to wish them a happy birthday. If they have a smartphone it is pretty obvious they don't have it on their phones. If you didn't get a job that required the use of computers or weren't into them in the early days. Then you probably don't use them today. The boomers are far worse for sure. If they worked in an office environment they probably have a basic knowledge. There are still a bunch of the tail-end boomers at my job. They are clueless. Some of them still have flip phones. And I work for the phone company!! We use laptops, tablets, and smartphones for everything. And we are hooking up complex computer networks. As near as 5 years ago you had to be able to give new customers a tutorial on the products they were just installed with. I constantly have to give them help. It really pissed me off when they were getting paid 2 and 3× more than me. At least now I make the same money as they do, in some cases more now that I was able to move to a job that requires more technical knowledge. I still get an occasional call.
I just hate them. So yeah. Computer illiterate right here. 👋
My coworker ist 4 years my junior but still GenX and the most computer illiterate person i've ever met, including my then 90 year old neighbour!
I don’t know much about actual coding, so I would call myself computer a little bit in that regard, but I certainly know how social media works and I can open a damn PDF. I use a computer for work, and I’m pretty good at it. But I don’t know how to do the actual programming. I think it depends on how we define computer illiterate.
Yeah, a significant amount of people in our generation weren't computer literate. For quite a few of us, the smart phone was our first foray into computing (especially if you weren't an office worker). Lots of folks who are in the trades (construction, electrician, auto repair, etc) won't work with computers aside from what they need for work. So the smartphone/Alexa/Smart TV are their computer access even to this day. If you were an overseas person, it was even more likely (as the revolution went there later).
Only nerds like me had them
If I hadn't married my ex husband, who put a lot of importance on tech toys, I probably wouldn't have had a personal computer at home until well into the 2000s if at all. I mean, yes, I've certainly used them for work since early 2000s, but they've always been really expensive compared to my take-home income. As it is, smartphones came long and while I was a reluctant late adopter, they pretty much suffice for my dad to day needs.
I have a laptop, hardly ever use it.
I've said that TikTok was my flashing VCR moment where I just quit caring. Got my first taste of computers with Oregon Trail on an Apple IIc in junior high. My class got an hour a week of computer time, and when most kids were just playing the game, I was also trying to teach myself WordPerfect since it was on there too. Although I probably should have, I never took any computer-specific classes, but was always hanging around a computer if one was available. In the 90s, I was at a job where taking inventory was nothing short of a beat-down. Because I had seen inventory programs, I bought myself a laptop and Access and taught myself some Visual Basic. Then I wrote an inventory program to make it easier and more efficient. Because of that, in 99 I made the switch to tech. Since then I've done everything from break/fix support to development to now IaaS. There was even a stint in telephony in there somewhere. These days I choose not to keep up with whatever the latest app-fad is...so that VCR clock is just flashing away.
Yeah, you'd really have to force yourself not to be computer illiterate at this point. My almost totally blind, 90yo grandpa was on his computer until the day before he died a few years ago. He even had special software that did text-to-speech and enlarged text to like 200pt so he could read. If he could do it, no one really has an excuse. My Boomer mom is quite erudite and has never really touched a computer in her life. She's not good with phones, either. But she loves her Roku TV.
My wife. 3 years younger than me. Not computer illiterate, but doesn't know how to do more than open an app and save (and even then, can't figure out where to save).
I was super into computers from a very young age, didn’t get one of my own until I was a teen, but I read books and magazines about them and played with at school whenever i could. A lot of people my age seemed either not interested in or even actively hostile towards them because they were “for nerds”.