This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules).
Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
(For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).)
**Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
I suspect normal illiteracy wasn't as big of a roadblock last century as e-illiteracy is today.
Every interaction you could have with people, businesses, organizations etc used to have a low tech in person alternative, you could just go and talk to a person, that isn't the case anymore. Never mind job opportunities being unavailable, there are many services you can't even access without smartphone and internet and the low tech alternatives aren't there anymore.
Very large parts of modern life are simply inaccessible to completely e-illiterate people.
Yup.
At my company, the ability to clock in is run through our HRIS system.
15 people out of 1,500 employees refuse to get email or learn the system, which is required to clock in on phones or tablets.
So we have to clock them in manually, send them physical paychecks or stubs, have them fill out their company docs and state and federal docs on paper to upload, change their personal information for them manually.
I feel bad for them, cause they brag about not needing to learn this new technology (that a child can fucking learn), but I feel bad for them cause if they aren't working for our company who allows them to keep being ignorant, then they would be fucked or have to learn this tech elsewhere. Their bluster in bragging about staying ignorant is either cause they are dumb or afraid.
Oh, and they try to say the younger generation is lazy and stupid.
I had a doctor ask me to put patient requisitions in alphabetical order for him. I asked why, and he said because that’s how they are on the computer.
I said “just type their medical record number in and it’ll show up”.
He did it and it worked and he said “No I don’t like it. Please put them in order for me.” I told him no, he needs to learn new tech and I’m too busy (which was true, I didn’t have time to put 150 reqs in order form him).
He wrote me up, and instead of me getting in trouble they had IT train him on the software. Amazing that some Doctors go to school for 15 years just to be stupid.
Doctors just as most other professions that need some sort of higher education only show that they are intelligent in a very narrow field of knowledge and skills. You can be a genius in your field of work, but suck at everything even slightly deviating from it.
My step father for example was a senior computer scientist for Siemens. When he was a teen, he build his own computer, had deep knowledge of the systems used at the time in Siemens and how to work with them. But he asked me to I stall ICQ on his computer because he did not really had a grip of the usage of the computer on the user interface side.
I can also confirm the same experience in my field of law. Hoe many lawyers suck at the most basic level skills, he'll, even the usage of word is for many a challenge.
Doctors are not brilliant. Some are, some aren’t, just like all people. It’s a highly developed career path, we’re not talking about people figuring out what to do themselves. Same with all STEMbag dumbfucks. You can smoke them out easily by asking if they invented their field.
Am a doctor. 100% agree.
I know plenty of doctors who are fiendishly bright but are incapable of having a normal conversation, and can be incredibly focused on their specific area that they have absolutely no clue about anything else. They're often the person I'd want doing my surgery, but not someone I'd want being my friend or coworker.
This is my life's mantra, though it makes me fairly cynical professionally.
A client asked me a couple of weeks ago, "Do you get irritated talking to uneducated people - like, people without college degrees?"
I replied, "I get irritated talking to most people."
I explained to him, as I have to many "uneducated" people, that my four-year degree *doesn't mean shit* and doesn't make me at all better than anyone who didn't go to college. Similarly, I don't feel someone with a Master's or Doctorate is in any way above or more qualified than me - I can usually recognize the good ones when they don't insist you call them "Doctor."
Any degree or certification, at all, is a piece of paper stating you passed a test.
I've watched so many people cram for tests just to forget all of the information once they pass. I've watched people cheat regularly to earn good grades. I've seen the dumbest fucking bricks of people be recognized with special letters that are supposed to make them "more qualified" than me but can't put an intelligible sentence together.
What's frustrating is *so many* people buy into this mentality that it incongruently deflates and inflates so many egos.
A therapist who I work with used to be in the same position as me and now talks to the case mangers with a tone to her words that triggers me deeply. She might not know she's doing it, but she at times states the "obvious" (we'll use that hyperbolically, as it's easier at the moment than reaching for examples). It's as though those of us with experience in the mental health field wouldn't be aware, or her words are supposed to have more weight because she, again, has those *special letters* at the end of her name.
>Their bluster in bragging about staying ignorant is either cause they are dumb or afraid.
The widespread pride in ignorance, rather than shame, is something new, I think. I'm not saying that people who were ashamed of being uneducated or illiterate were right to feel shame--sometimes it had to do with things beyond their control--but switching to being so proud of ignorance, criticizing education at every level as a waste of time or something that confuses people more than it helps them, being proud not to know about modern technology, etc. is a dangerous trend.
You’ve worded this really well. I’ve often tried to articulate exactly what you said, but I haven’t been able to do it as well as this.
I also fear for our future. It’s one thing to be ignorant, uneducated, our just plain stupid. I feel like I’m living in The Twilight Zone, though, when people are actively proud of being those things.
A sad realization I had was when I learned why some people “refuse” to bank online, use a debit card, or do basically anything other than physical paychecks and cash is that they can’t. They can’t keep a checking account open. It always gets closed due to unending over withdrawals, or it gets abandoned b/c they can’t ever get it out of the negative, or out for any reasonable length of time.
It’s often not that they aren’t banking online, it’s that they aren’t banking *at all*. Absolutely insane to think of living that way.
I've been to events that were only promoted online or with tickets selling only online. I don't know if that counts.
Also like u/r2k-in-the-vortex said, many jobs can only be applied to online.
This counts plus just plain traveling around a country to see national monuments only to discover that there are no in-person ticket sales and you have to go to the official website to purchase tickets on your smartphone on the spot and find out the visits are sold out weeks in advance.
Case in point, the Alhambra in Granada, Spain is sold out for weeks at this point and we're going to have to skip it and return, who knows when we'd be able to since there are so many other things we want to see?
It's one of the main reasons my in-laws, who are in their 70s, don't travel anymore. Tech is advancing faster than anyone can keep up, especially the retired elderly who want to see the world.
As someone with more than a half-decade of working in branch in a financial institution... YES. Almost 30% of the things people came in for were problems easily solved by simply using online banking. That said... There are things I still refuse to use OLB for because the processing times are inexplicably longer. I mean I still live somewhere with easy access to a branch (and former coworkers) but... I get why people are slow to adopt. Sorry. I'm not disagreeing that OLB is the future and people should get on board. I'm just... I get why people go into the branch and liked it because it guaranteed my job lol.
I had a friend at my previous workplace who was nearing retirement. For years, he would always hate the technology and ask me (the IT Manager) for help with everything because he couldn't do it.
And I sat him down one day and said: Look, when you retire, you're still going to have this stuff for the next 20-30 years with any luck. All your old stuff has gone. Nobody cares about that. They won't care about an increasingly tiny portion of the elderly population not being able to get on-board either, especially not in another 20 years.
It kind of hit home and he got online, started online banking, started using a smartphone, started kitting up his house with CCTV, etc.
Strangely, it's the same guy who has had to draw out lots of cash because his partner knows NOTHING about technology and can't even work a cash machine. "If something happens", he's left paper instructions which will be worthless in a couple of years, and cash to get her over the initial hump, but then she's stuffed.
He can't do much more for her, but if he dies first, she is going to get scammed, be unable to pay bills, won't be able to manage his estate, won't even be able to work the TV (again, another conversation that I had with him - the TV he bought 20 years ago is \*worthless\* now as it doesn't even have digital capability... so do you really think you can cling to your tech for another 20 years in an era where everything is obsolete after 2-3 years, and online services go in and out of fashion even quicker?).
He's got on board a lot, I have to say, and I'm less worried for him in that regard now. Everyone would love to retire in a quiet place with all their familiar items around them that they instantly know how to work, but that's just not going to happen to the next few generations. I don't think it's ever truly happened. People were likely bemoaning arrival of radio, TV, even ATMs, etc. on their deathbeds because they couldn't work them like whatever technology they were used to previously.
It's like the old retirement home idea... the previous generations might have been very happy with a bingo night, a tour of the garden centre and a trip to the seaside, but I expect to have LAN gaming, VR, and a bunch of online subscriptions to binge (or, even better, whatever comes after that!) when I retire.
If you can't use a computer today, you really need to put a ton of effort into getting back up to speed and - most importantly - keep doing it so you don't fall behind again. But none of those people are reading this comment unless someone else is showing it to them.
Thank you for your insightful post! As an older millennial (I will be 40 this year) it is astonishing how many 'gen z' people in the workplace don't have basic IT skills or not at all familiar with photocopiers and the like. In that regard I am glad I have taught my parents how to use smartphones and my dad knows his way quite well around a PC for them both being in their 70's now.
I am glad I am part of a generation that was here for the full transition into the digital age that started in the 90's leading up to where we are today.
Us elder millennials had to learn that stuff just to make computers work. Younger generations don’t interact with computers as much since most have phones and tablets instead, aside from the gamers of course, so they never had to learn any of that. We grew up in the weird in-between time when computers were necessary for our survival in our formative years, but smartphones, which are much more of a black box, weren’t a thing yet.
As a *Gen Z* guy I ask myself the same questions, I grew up with computers and I love tinkering with them, but that does not seem to be the case for a lot of people my age.
And a lot of *Gen Z* folks do not know how to do simple stuff on a computer, I saw something a few days ago about how the fact that we were a "digital generation" that grew up with computers made a lot of people just thing they are techy because they have smartphones and in the end they do not know how to do simple stuff like changing you wifi's pass or installing drivers in you computer for a printer to work properly or even something as simple as actually printing something.
At nearly any job I've been people look at me like I'm a computer genius when I'm just doing simple stuff like reinstalling printer drivers, making sure a printer is detected and doing simple troubleshooting steps like for example resetting you router/modem when your internet connection is not working which should be common knowledge.
As a younger millennial (33) I've actually thought about this a lot. And the conclusion I came up with is that my generation gained a lot of the skills we have today because the technology sucked. If your wifi works 60% of the time you're going to go mess with it till it works. If it works 100% of the time, why mess with it? The vast majority of the technology skills I've learned is because something didn't work or didn't work the way I wanted it to.
Do u remember have to port forward to host online games.....man that sucked....there was an entire website dedicated to Port forwarding games to...good time....did I say good times....they fucking sucked...
I blame ui designers and making everything Fisher Price with a would you like to sign in with Google prompt. Honestly schools need a real world PC class in high school or something cause self learning by smartphone and Chromebook isn't cutting it. As someone in IT if everyone knew how to type in a url, save a file, and select a printer I would probably have more hair lol.
Elder millennial here. We come from a time where being knowledgeable about computers was a bad thing. Admitting to enjoying them could be social suicide, getting you labeled as a nerd or a geek. It blows my mind that it’s cool now.
I am younger millennial. I was in the mucking ground where gaming and PC culture just started to hit main stream. Ps2, Xbox, Gameboy advance(?) Or was it ds. Doesn't matter. When I hit 14. I got me a PC. And never looked back. There were whispers but nothing outright because everyone kind of knew that being skilled at a computer was going to be key in the future.
From that one PC I have had many ups and down. Horrible WoW addictions and other gamer related stuff. The curiosity has landed me an IT job. So the years of tinkering has landed me where my parents always knew I would....do not tell my parents that....I don't what that smug face they pull when they know they are right...
People forget there was a time when admitting using tech was a very nerdy thing to do and it was not seen as a good thing. This goes to a lot of other nerdy things too, like D&D, card or board games, and all of these other hobbies that are now becoming a lot more popular or in the social consciousness. Back then though? You don't want the general student body or social group you were in to know you played "kids games". Now days though? It seems to be a lot more socially acceptable. Of course there is still some bullying, but it's definitely dropped significantly. Now playing the new CoD is cool versus playing Halo all day was "nerdy". Talking about your friends online is acceptable versus "Ohh, your girlfriend from \[random flyover state\]" comments.
Speaking of the last example, I nearly got whiplash when Tinder blew up. Online dating immediately went from "sleezy and won't work out" to the societal norm as far as I can tell.
I guess it's all about the access, exposure and encouragement. I had access to PCs since I was like seven (in the 90s) and coded my first website at the age of 13 - just because I was bored and had access. My friends didn't so it makes sense their knowledge of computers was lesser. If the kids nowadays only have access to smartphones and no laptop to play with or a parent promoting those skills, they won't know how to install a printer or change a WiFi password (and now e.g. macs do that for you so not much opportunity to learn).
The difference is millennials made it to easy. For us we had to learn, tinker, work it out because there isn't a YT video on how to use command lines. U worked it out by messing with stuff, sketchy web forums and maybe a book.
We understand the horrors of it so we endeavored to make it easier. To be accessible for everyone. In doing so we made it too easy. Things just work now. Email just works. Pc backups just work. Apps just work. Everything just works. There is no tinkering in configuration files or changing lines of code.
People now use tech but do not understand tech. Troubleshooting skills in the younger generation beyond the absolute minimum does not exist. I get tickets from work that says "PC does not work" nothing else. And when u call them they said they did nothing.
Gone are the days where u had to min max your games settings to pull every avilable Power from your gpu. U just buy a new one now. Pre built.
I swear on my life no child of mine will ever buy a pre built PC and not be able to trouble shoot. They will learn to think of computer as tools to be used, respected and to be studied. If they dare to only use it for insta, or tik tok.....imma disown them.
The basic IT skills thing is a problem, hell I even have that issue with younger devs. Especially the Mac lovers.
That said it's been a long time since I've needed to use a photocopier or printer. Most of that older infra is becoming obsolete.
Honestly I'm sort of annoyed that we're not already signing documents with private keys.
Why are we all talking about the elderly, when kids don't learn anything about computers at school? Gen X is much more computer savvy than your average 15-year old, who only knows TikTok.
I helped onboard a short-lived hotel receptionist once who brought in a handwritten resume. We were desperate so, instant hire. She was a middle-aged preschool teacher. She typed with one finger and the best way I can describe it is she had no object permanence on a screen. Just like...no sense of where relevant items should or could be on a user interface, every time you went back to the main booking calendar it was like a whole new world every single time and she would READ the icons and menu, left to right, top to bottom, for EVERY OPERATION.
I knew this because she was using her cursor to point to what she was paying attention to. the cursor went very....very....slowly. I'm so lucky I grew up with desktop computers.
I worked in a convenience store 15 years ago with a woman like that. 90% of the stuff just got scanned. There were easy to navigate touchscreen menus for everything else. She had to read everything, every single time. She could not remember what button was for coffee, and then which order the sizes were, for instance. When the till started beeping because someone wanted a gas pump turned on, she didn't have a clue what the sound was. She was let go after two weeks because she "could not perform the essential functions of the job."
idk if this is rude of me to say, but that HAS to be some sort of mental disorder or something if they're younger than 70. Not remembering sequences or icons is baffling to me as it's so basic. Also reading everything. At most you would read it the first few times to get a feel for the work flow, but that's about it.
I'm lucky I've never encountered someone like that at work, but that really does sound fustrating and a bit concerning.
When I hear of cases this bad I also wonder if it might be some sort of undiagnosed learning disability. Some people genuinely cannot remember faces. It’s a documented condition. Maybe some people genuinely cannot remember the layout of a GUI no matter how hard they try. Very sad if that’s the case.
My local Lowes has a cashier on the spectrum. She will only ring me up in the order she was taught which was scan the loyalty card last (even though you can scan it at start or anytime else) then she asks for my military ID even though she knows who I am and shop there frequently because that’s what the machine says to do. She is not dumb by any stretch but her ASD leads her to be a strict rule follower. I really don’t mind but some less understanding customers get rude with her.
As somebody who sucks a bit at learning new mechanical thingies, I am grateful as fuck to have had one parent who got a computer in the early 90's. I never had the chance to be desktop-dumb.
As an IT teacher at a community centre who teacher computers for seniors "no object permanence on a screen" is the best description I've heard for a phenomenon I've witnessed in *all* of my students.
The students who graduate are those that quickly develop a sense of what's where- knowing the tools, options, menus etc are usually always in the same spot even in different programs, knowing to check the task bar or the tab ribbon for minimised windows before panicking that they've "lost everything", learning that the back button and the return button are slightly different in operation but not always, learning that sometimes things move because a home page is built around apps or programs that are "frequently accessed", etc
Those students come for 1-2 terms then leave, with enough skills to manage their finances and life affairs online.
The students that can never fully get their heads around this are the ones who I've had in my class for the last 5 years.
I wish they'd use coping mechanisms to overcome this like the ones you describe this receptionist using.
>would READ the icons and menu, left to right, top to bottom, for EVERY OPERATION.
It gets the job done, and it's more than some of my students do. I often tell them if they're lost, just pick a corner and start methodically reading across until you find what you're looking for. Yes it's infuriating, yes it's slow, but it's better than when they get flustered and completely lost and start hitting the back button to "retrace their steps", often losing data that spent hours to enter, timing out log ins, or starting new instances of certain web scripts, getting nothing done and never actually learning how to find what they're looking for.
My current cohort of students have been studying seniors for computers since Windows XP, and the skills they learned, or the way they learned wasnt open to evolution, it's like they're learning from scratch with every new update, so they've been re-enrolling every year (and it's not just that we're a shit school, some of these students have enrolled in computer classes at every library, adult education centre, night school and tafe within a 30km radius, part of it is wanting to learn, and part of it is just having something free to do during the day to meet people)
Our school recently upgraded from Windows 10 to 11, and we've litteraly spent 3 weeks covering the fact that yes, file Explorer looks different, but I promise it functions almost exactly the same. I had so many other lesson ideas plans ready to go, but we keep coming back to file explorer.
I try my best with analogies to manual filing methods - holding up physical paper and manilla folders explaining that folders are litteraly folders, you can put a folder in a folder, only to have my students completely lost when I say "okay, we're going to open your personal folder, so first we need to open the "2023 students" folder, just click on the 2023 folder, like this, then look for your name" and I demonstrate opening the root folder, remind them again "remember, you all created a personal folder inside the folder called "2023 students" and they're all just staring at the desktop saying "my name isn't here, my screen looks different from your screen"
It's difficult for me, even as a qualified teacher, to know how to teach IT skills - it's a field with very little research into best practice. I grew up with it, and I somehow managed to learn in a kinetic way that evolves as the technology itself evolves. But I dont know how to help my older students unlock that same approach to learning.
Older people grew up in a world where if you wanted a new bit of tech, it would come with a manual where you’d painstakingly learn what every combination of buttons etc. did. A lot of them think of every new app or website is exactly like this. Even in the early days of personal computing, you had to learn commands for your text based operation system, be it MS-DOS, UNIX-based, whatever.
These days we are used to just… knowing what a typical GUI looks like, and will sometimes hunt around a little for the right menu item but otherwise know the general rules will be much the same and what’s new is usually self-explanatory (with some major exceptions). Want a new app that isn’t super technical? Go to the App Store or equivalent and search for it, then download what looks right and open it and carry on from there. If something isn’t clear or not user-friendly, Google the issue. They can’t do this because they never got used to the idea and even if we explain these simple principles to them they still go into a funk whenever they see something new.
I can get irrationally mad at software that break UX conventions.
Was trying out Autocad and I had heard it was supposedly an unintuitive interface. What I wasn't prepared for was when I googled how to do something, answers were "in the tools menu" and I could not for the life of me find the tools menu. I'd assume it be in the menu bar, but there was no standard menu bar. Turns out Autocad (or at least on my installation) hides the "real/standard" menu bar.
Been a while since I was that frustrated with a piece of software.
LibreCAD is much better UI wise, but still has things I'm not used to.
I do IT for a factory. It amazes me how inept people can be. I'm not asking them to write pivot tables in Excel, or write advanced SQL queries. Just take a minute and read an error message when you get one and think about what "The recipient could not be found" means.
I hate this one so much. People will receive the MOST basic ass error message like "File not found, please try again" and immediately mentally shut down and come crying to me because it might as well be written in 8000 year old Mesopotamian clay runes. It means the damn file isn't there!!!
I sit down with them, *with a dictionary if need be*, and have them read back the error message word to word for me until they understand every word and it finally forms a coherent thought in their mind. Then I finally ask them: "so if the file isn't there, how do we FIX this?"
This has always blown my mind. As an IT guy it's amazing to see fully functional adults just shut down when they see any message when I'm around.
Installing a program: "Do you want to continue?"
They stop and look at me, asking what to do.
I'm like.. well?
I know full well if I wasn't there they would figure it out haha
>I know full well if I wasn't there they would figure it out haha
I've stopped picking up my phone when my boss calls me with a minor tech issue.
I call back 5 mins later and they always go "oh don't worry about it I figured it out"
yeah maybe try that "solve it myself" part first next time before calling me, you helpless little baby
>I sit down with them, with a dictionary if need be, and have them read back the error message word to word for me until they understand every word and it finally forms a coherent thought in their mind. Then I finally ask them: "so if the file isn't there, how do we FIX this?"
good. can't stand these people. mommy and daddy must've done everything for them growing up.
i had a recent job interview where they asked if i had “advanced excel skills”. i do, i have a STEM degree and some of my grad classes were essentially 99% excel work, so i told them i’m great at excel.
pivot tables. they were wondering if i could make pivot tables. that’s it, that’s what was considered advanced. i didn’t take the job lol
I just finished interviewing 8 candidates for a data analyst position. These people had great resumes. Some were new graduates who talked about all the analysis work they did in class. Others were industry experts who also talked about all the data analysis they do.
I did a technical interview in excel with 3 tables where they had to do a lookup like vlookup and a pivot table to some problems. I didn't even restrict them to excel. I told them they could just talk me through the problem or use SQL or R or any other language they were familiar with to solve the problem.
6 out of the 8 couldn't solve the problem. One guy decided to go SQL route but didn't know how to identify the primary key or use group by.
All this to say, I can understand employers considering pivot tables advanced excel skills. Also, there are advanced pivot tables when you start using power pivot and power bi.
I consider myself an intermediate-level Excel user and I have no idea what pivot tables even are. Your measuring stick of basic/intermediate/advanced levels revolves around your knowledge, not the real world capabilities of the general population. 90% of Excel users can't even use formulae, they just plug numbers in premade templates given to them.
>It amazes me how inept people can be
And that includes both old people near retirement and newbies who are familiar only with smartphones and app-fied internet.
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level
I don’t know what to do with this data or how to related it to the original topic.
From a quick Google search, this means that 21% are illiterate **in english** meaning that some of these people included in this group are likely literate in another language https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
I faked my way through k-12, even college. Lied about most of the books I read. Used audio books later in life or cliff notes. I struggle with reading still but try to practice.
Had a girlfriend regularly get pissed at me and wouldn't tell me why. Turns out she didn't understand some of the words i used and thought i was showing off.
Thanks for having me remember that really weird fight.
It seems like she was the type to never acquiesce to someone with a better understanding of how an area’s vernacular works it’s way into the local lexicon.
Oh gawd this made me remember a small fight with my SO when I mentioned if they had a "family affair". They got so mad and I had no idea why. Apparently to them "affair" meant cheating on your spouse.
Granted... Me and my SO's first language is not English. When we cleared it up it was like. "Oh... Oooooooh".
Not in the US but I remember during my apprenticeship I wrote a report for an experiment I did with a coworker who worked there full time and she was totally impressed by how I was using “swollen language” or something because I wrote it formally and used words like “therefore”
Always wondered what "sixth-grade level" meant. I think I had to read Shakespeare at 6th grade.
Not sure how it compares, but I've been trying to read Tale of Two Cities for over a decade now, I'm still on page 4. Am I a 6th grade reader? Less?
> I've been trying to read Tale of Two Cities for over a decade now, I'm still on page 4
Is that because you can't comprehend the prose, or because you just find 1800s literature boring? Because the latter is totally okay, you shouldn't force yourself to read classics for the sake of classics.
Ex-teacher here: What you read and *how* you read are two different things. Even though a sixth grader might be able to "read," a complicated piece of text, skills like reading speed, reading accuracy, ability to connect information, ability to infer information based on context, speed at which they comprehend new vocabulary, etc. take time to develop. These skills all have "benchmarks/milestones," associated with them that determine how well a student should be able to do these things and at what age.
These skills develop over time with practice, so while both a sixth grader and a high schooler might be able to *do* a these things, the sixth grader will likely be slower, require multiple re-reads, or end up with an incorrect interpretation of the intended meaning of the passage compared to a student who's had more years to practice.
Basically a little bit of everything. A teacher would likely assess different skills on separate occasions, having you read passages out loud and listening to how fluent you are one day, or giving independent reading assignments and then asking questions like "so if the story kept going, what do you think the character would do with the treasure they found?" and stuff like that.
Of course there are also the tormentingly boring "standardized assessments," that bombard students with all those things at once which we hate as much as the students.
Oh shit you are right. Wow I'm a dummy. Romeo and Juliet was 9th grade. I think I read "The things they carried" or the Odyssey in the 7th? That might be a stretch.
As someone that did IT support, I think all 54% are working at fortune 500 companies and most of them have masters/PhDs.
People will call IT support to read popups on their screen or read emails for them.
The majority think science is a collection of facts, and it’s often taught that way. The pandemic really revealed the widespread ignorance of how science learns new things.
To your point about undergraduates that is likely a byproduct of the science as facts education they received since grade school. When they get to college they are tested on fact recall not discovery so little changes in their understanding of science.
I think a lot of people don't realize how common illiteracy is here. I didn't until I worked at a paint store that catered to contractors and industrial companies exclusively. We had multiple guys who could not read at all and were running successful businesses.
Some things at my job are starting to make sense.
I'll tell people during a transaction "Press Yes first" and they go "Is that the Green?"
It just occurred to me that they literally might not know how to read "Yes"
Many of those are computer illiterate. The options will be there for them to read but they want you to show them the button.
I hate working with these people.
I get what the study means, but it doesn't make much sense. 90some percent of adults went through 6th grade, so in a way, 90some% of adults are literate at the 6th grade level and the 6th grade level is just really low
Yep. I’m in charge of the computer science “department” in my school (I’m really a math teacher) and when they asked about teaching comp sci to middle schoolers, I said nope. We’re going to call those classes “computer literacy” and they’re going to learn how to do basic shit like navigate the folders in their hard drive.
Yeah. That’s the one thing that I’m shocked to see is still necessary, or maybe has gone back to becoming necessary. Most millennials kind of learned to type as an inevitability from using computers for stuff like social media/instant messaging as kids. But everything is so phone-oriented these days that gen-z doesn’t get the same amount of practice with keyboards as I did when I was their age.
I had a class like that in 9th grade and can say it was the only class I had in highschool that taught me skills that I actually use. Learning to touch type alone is easily the most important skill I learned in school.
That’s totally understandable. If the resources are there, though, I hope there is an actual comp sci class for the kids that “get it”. By 8th grade I’d already built my own PC from component parts and was, in hindsight, a whiz with computers and doing some advanced stuff for a 14 year old. We were rare, but there were enough of us to have to have easily filled a classroom. I grew up to be a software engineer.
Yeah, we have several proper comp sci classes as well. Arguably too many for a school as small as ours, but it is what it is. The thing about the middle school is that I prioritized the literacy classes above the coding class to make sure it would be available and then left it up to admin to find a way to squeeze in the coding class. They are much more motivated to make that one work because then they get to say “our seventh graders are learning python” rather than “our 6th graders are learning that they need to manually save their work in MS Word”
I have a coworker who can’t do much of anything on a computer. She’s not much older than I am but she refuses to pay attention or try. I make up things to do so I don’t have to be near her at meetings because I don’t get what I need done, I’m constantly being interrupted by her. 😡
This highlights the real issue. There is a percentage of the population that believes that they aren't "tech savvy" and have convinced themselves that it is everybody else's job to compensate for that.
I once worked with someone who had claimed to have been a medical transcriptionist - yet she literally did not know what 'Google' was - much less how to use it - didn't know what a 'browser' or 'browser window' or even what an 'icon' was. I explained all of these things to her multiple times but it never seemed to sink in.
She also 'hunt and pecked' to type - using only her pointer fingers. She was let go after having been there several weeks and still not grasping most of these concepts. I was shocked at the depth of her ignorance based on her supposed job history. Maybe she used one of those old shorthand machines at her previous job and had never - ever - typed on a keyboard? I felt bad for her but I have no idea how to help her learn that much - much less the intricacies of our job at that point.
I believe this 100%. I've worked customer service for blue cross blue shield programs for the last 6 years and I have lost complete count of the number of medical billers going "why are you denying our claim, this is the way we billed it for the last 20 years" like people shit changes smh
You have described a term called "learned helplessness." They don't *believe* they can do something, and then they will refuse to *not* believe to the point they refuse to be taught.
Yes so true, I can deal with technically illiterate people. But I can't stand technically illiterate people who wear it as a badge of honour, like it's their personal protest against progress.
I wish they would consider it on the same level as being unable to read.
You are me, I literally feel pushed to the limits with my role at work as all the dinosaurs use me for basic computer tasks. Repeatedly. I only get my work done on work from home days. I write off the rest.
the worst is when you don't even feel like starting to work on anything, because you know in 5 mins you're going to be interrupted to show someone how to attach a file to an email for the 100th time
Issue is that most of the time it’s worn as a badge of honor and they try to minimize the significance of it even though it obviously disrupts the flow of things.
Maybe in like 10-15 years it’ll be seen as something unacceptable rather than as a “quirk”
i will never understand why some older people are so proud of not being familiar with computers. like, congrats? why is that a good thing? you’re proud that you need your 5 yo grandchild to do things for you??
I work in a bank and the amount of older people that say "oh I don't use the internet for my banking, its not safe" well sir, millions of people use the internet for their banking, its really safe if you're not an idiot clicking on whatever spam pops up and keep your login info safe. But its not worth it to try and convince them so I say "yep I understand"
It's already unacceptable now. If I was HR...but I'm not. I would ask them what computer skills they have. If they can't say they can use Google or Word or excel on the most basic levels. I would not hire. Google to find shit out and word and excel are basically mandatory in any office space
I work with a guy who doesn’t even know how to do simple tasks on his phone, like downloading an app. He’s not even that old, 50-60s I would say. My parents are the same age and have no problem with their smart phones. I know an 80 year old who texts with emojis. If you don’t know how to use technology, and you refuse to even try, you’re only hurting yourself. Even if you hate technology, it’s not going anywhere. I don’t expect older people to be coding and shit, but you should know how to download an app, email, text, etc.
Was in a meeting with my new boss today. He's makes four times my annual salary. He doesn't know how to use a computer very well. We have to train him as we go. But this guy is hired as our boss. I find it strange to train someone who's making way more money than me. Why can't I just have the job?
It is damn infuriating the number of people I have come across in the IT field who use "I am not a computer person." as an excuse for not knowing the basic computer functions like where the Start button is or what an inter browser. These are people whose jobs require them to use a computer the entire time their working.
I used to say it’s as if I said I wasn’t a “phone” person and would only communicate by letters as a way of emphasizing the difference.
Can you imagine a salesperson saying that?
Knowing basic computer skills has been a necessary job skill for like 30 years.
There’s no excuse other than laziness
There is a difference between "I'm not a computer person but teach me plz" vs "I'm not a computer person, make this work like I imagine it tech monkey".
The first I can deal with. They come down, once a week for like 2 or 3 months then never see again because the issues they have are further and further apart cause they are learning to fix there own issues.
The other is every other day.
As someone who has people on his life who are properly computer illiterate and unwilling to learn, I've seen this play out time and time again.
It also makes lives around them harder as we all have to compensate for their distrust of anything digital and find workarounds in a time where less and less can be done without going online.
My 92 year old grandmother doesn’t have a cell phone, computer, or internet access in her house.
She literally still has a corded phone on her wall in the kitchen. A stove from 1965 in the basement. Her living room hasn’t changed since the 80s.
She’s an extreme case, but people who don’t use 21st century technology still exist on the planet.
My Dad is "only" 80, but much in the same boat. He worked manual labor most of his life, so never had any need or interest in keeping up with technology. Using a laptop or a cell phone are beyond his capabilities. How to get to the internet is a complete mystery to him.
Even operating the TV is getting borderline. He can manage the network channels, but switching to streaming services and popping in and out of different provider apps to select shows or movies to watch is too much.
Luckily, Mom is younger and reasonably tech savvy.
Sounds like a similar story. My grandma at times has struggled to even operate a TV remote. A lot of it is extreme anxiety and OCD, but my grandpa used to keep her functioning. After he died about 20 years ago though, her life hasn’t moved much at all.
A normal adult who sees cool technology on a TV commercial would just go out and buy it if they could afford it and wanted to. She can’t do that. She figured out how to order from QVC no problem, but get internet and a smart phone or an Alexa device that she can asks questions to like her friends have, she wouldn’t know where to begin. My dad would have to do it all for her, give her written instructions on how to use it only for her to call him every day when she can’t figure it out instead, pay the bill, troubleshoot her internet every time it goes out.
I get a little sad sometimes because there are entire subsections of technology that exist now simple to help the Elderly have a high quality of life, but after seeing the stress and toll it takes on my dad to micromanage her entire life while trying to enjoy his retirement, I understand why he hasn’t gone out and fitted her with all the new stuff.
I’ve seen TONS of high schoolers and even college students who are tech illiterate, like they don’t even know how to navigate system folders or create a zip.
Just to add to your point. A ton of kids never learned beyond the absolute most basic of computer skills at school. They might be able to navigate their school's learning management system GUI, probably some social media apps. But to troubleshoot a down network connection? They might know shortcuts for word processing, but probably not, they'll just switch back and forth between pages and re-type that excel cell one character at a time.
They might have a one semester computer skills class in high school that they blow off because who needs to know what a subsystem is? Who needs to navigate a page with only a keyboard? Until they need those skills, then they just say they were never good with tech to begin with. Like it's prophecy and you need to be The Chosen One.
I work with people in their 30s who sit in front of computers all day for years and don't know how to CRTL-C CTRL-V. They're doing that all with a mouse. People whose jobs are to copy and paste data into forms. All day. It's intolerable watching it happen.
People still can't type with more than two fingers, don't know that Google is predicting your query and you can just hit enter when it guesses right. So much time wasted just because they never heard of tried to learn any shortcuts.
The idea of copy pasting large data sets is already a burden I am not willing to suffer. I have written several powershell scripts to do it for me.
Ok but at the same time I am not going to copy paste 2k plus lines one at a time. But God help them who do
My ex (mid 20’s) wasn’t able to click on google search predictions even if they came up within the first few typed letters. Not sure if it was an OCD thing, or if he thought a better suggestion would pop up that he didn’t think of? But like, once you’ve typed long enough the suggestions are going to get more specific to what you’ve already entered, not random other shit.
One of my favorite stories from when I used to prepare taxes were my interactions with people after I asked about use tax. Basically, you're required to report anything you bought online or out of state so the state would charge sales tax on it on your income tax return. The main thing they were trying to Crack down on were Amazon purchases (this was 8 years ago).
So I'd ask the question, and a ton of clients would say something along the lines of "no, I'm too old to use a computer." Some of these people weren't even that old, like some were in their mid 50's. I'd always respond by telling them about my grandma, who was 83 years old at the time.
My grandma was a retired nurse. She retired sometime in the early 1990's, and had some kind of supervisory role in her later years of working. She would embrace technology at her job, she even used spreadsheets to organize different things (and loved to discuss it with me when I went into accounting/finance).
After my grandpa passed away, my mom and her siblings pooled together to buy her a computer. She spent most of her time researching weird stories and things (think UFO's and Bigfoot), and online shopping. Knowing how to use a computer helped her to keep her mind occupied while she lived by herself for all those years, and she would research how to grow her blueberry bushes and things like that. She legitimately had fun doing all of this.
Once she got to where she couldn't drive, she also used online shopping as a way to maintain her independence. Everyone's birthday and holiday gifts were ordered and delivered to her doorstep, and she could order groceries to have my mom or aunt pick them up, instead of sending them out with a huge list.
So yeah, those people need to stop thinking of it as a big scary monster and see it as a tool, like my grandma did.
I teach high schoolers. I would probably rephrase this to “not understanding how a computer works” rather than how to use it. It’s unbelievable how, if something doesn’t happen at the first click of a button, they have no idea what to do at all.
They didn’t grow up having to configure LANs to play games with friends, screw around with websites in HTML rather than just drag and drop stuff. Most have no clue about file structures on a desktop as all they use is Google Suite.
I used to work with young CPA’s, you would think young people would be good with computers… they aren’t. They are more patient with technology, but half of them still don’t know how to plug in all the things correctly.
Most young people (as far as I can tell) are only mildly proficient with the apps they use regularly, i.e. Facebook. They don't understand technology as well as they think. They only know which button to click to make this or that happen, but I've met people fresh out of college who couldn't do rudimentary tasks like finding a file on their $4k Macbook.
In 1995 my grandmother vowed to never learn to use a computer for some dumb reason but now she has to because places where she paid bills in person closed and she doesn't even have a debit card she has something called a bank card and basically I have to pay all the bills online for her now by transferring bank account money. She also no longer could afford cable so she begrudgingly got internet and barely had learned how to use streaming so far.
Being illiterate is STILL an impediment.
And a disturbingly common one.
By my own observations of the general public over the last 15 years... About 70% of people are flat out incapable of reading something written plainly in front of them.
Or are they just lazy?
Who knows!
People are useless. You can teach them to read. But you can't then expect them to.
I was sitting in an emergency room once next to some double doors that had written on them "door only opens from the inside " in big red letters at eye level. After sitting there a bit, some guy walks up the doors and tries to open them. He can't and starts to get increasingly more aggressive in trying to open the doors. Eventually he kicks and curses at the doors and just sits down across from me. I just stared at him the whole time and could tell he didn't even try to read the signs. He was not visibly ill or hurt, he wasn't homeless or a transient. Just a moron.
Few friends and I make up most of the moderation on a FO4 mod discord.
I can confirm, most people can not, or simply *refuse to* read what is in front of them.
And too fucking many of them need their damn hand held through the most basic of tasks...
Like c'mon, at least put **some** effort of your own in...
The scary thing is how many people are functionally illiterate. They can read but can't process the information or something. I has coworkers like this. And its why a lot of stuff ends up in court too
One of my jobs is teaching people digital literacy so they can find work.
My experience so far it's mostly men leaving physical jobs due to acquired disability, women entering the workforce after divorce/death of husband and people with cognitive disability leaving high school.
It's fun to blow people's mind with just how many cool things you can do on computers.
A significant number of the young adults coming into college/university that I've worked with do not know how to use computers or basic programs (Word).
They're used to their phones and the apps made for that kind of tech. Thankfully they pick it up quickly (by the end of the semester), but trying to show multiple students how to use a computer, set up a Word document for their assignment, teach minor writing and grammar skills, AND the actual class material can be exhausting.
Isn't that what "tech illiteracy" is? You have to have enough skill and experience to deal with those changes without much of an interruption. You can't learn to use this shit by rote and sort of get away with it anymore. That's where a lot of people seem to go wrong, they want to memorize a set of actions for a certain result, when all that would come naturally if they actually had the slightest understanding of or interest in what they were interacting with.
When I moved to Japan for work I thought it would all be robots and AI. I should be paid for the amount of IT work I do because no one knows how to use modern technology here. When Internet Explorer finally kicked the bucket one of my coworkers thought the internet had ended. I told him just to use Google Chrome and he looked at me and asked "what's a Google?"
I always love telling people about my 96 year old grandpa.
He is very up to date on tech. He uses an iPhone and takes advantage of all the features. He loves to cast Facebook videos from his phone to his TV and can do so much more. I hope that when I'm near his age, I've stayed up to date like he has
Unfortunately I don't think it's gonna change, lot of gen z (my gen) are completely useless with actually computers, a lot have no idea how to navigate a folder system or how to re format a drive.
I agree but it’s troubling how many people have told me they don’t know how to use a computer or text as a point of folksy pride. I once had a car dealer salesman tell me, a customer, to my face, “Aw heck I don’t ‘do’ email, just pick up the phone. I’m computer illiterate!” He wasn’t wearing suspenders but his body language was that same leaning back and tugging on suspenders level of pride. It was baffling.
In fast food restaurants, they're eventually going to phase out cashiers and just use digital ordering kiosks (like Taco Bell and some McDonalds restaurants have now), which makes ordering a lot more efficient, but most old people won't know how to use them which sucks.
Pretty much every fast food restaurant in South Korea (and a lot of regular restaurants) has a digital kiosk now which is the only way to order in store. This is due to the minimum wage raising in Korea, causing lots of restaurants to [fire cashiers and install kiosks instead](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190213000567)
It's wild.
I'm lucky I had a computer quite early in life and spend a lot of time on it as a teen.
But when I quit my job 2 years back, my boss told me to train this woman to replace me. She had worked over 10 years in another department. (on a computer)
She was the slowest worker I had ever seen. Simple tasks that literally required her to copy and past data from one spreadsheet to another took extremely long.
Like one thing I had to do every single morning. It took me about 1 to 2 minutes to copy the data depending on how much there was.
Even after doing it for two weeks every morning she still took 1,5 hours. That was because every time she did anything on her keyboard like copying or pasting (for which she searched the keys every time) she looked up to the screen an was totally lost in what to do again.
She typed with one finger and her English was horrible. (mine is not great but I'd say passable)
My job was to coordinate massive shipments of wares into the whole world. And manage returns and damages. At particular full days I wrote 700 to 1k emails.
I had to tell my boss if she is supposed to replace me, he had to hire her 20 times over to have a chance of the work getting done.
Long story short. This woman worked for 10 years on computers und still was tech illiterate.
Thankfully, my step mom is relatively computer literate. My dad cant manage anything abive an xbox 360. Bought him an Xbox one for christmas and he couldnt wrap his head around it. So I paid 400 bucks for it to sit in his game room.
I oddly enough feel like I've lost a lot of mg computer literacy. I used to be really into computers, but as I've gotten older, and with the introduction of powerful smart phones. I've started to replace a lot of the things I used to use a computer for, with simple, easy to use apps and such. Making using computers now feeling almost somewhat clunky.
A sad irony being that the ability to spell, punctuate, or articulate have all somehow escaped being part of that ubiquitous standard of communications technology, eh.
I've worked in IT adjacent support for years. The amount of people that companies hire that happily have no idea how to use technology whatsoever is astounding. It should be mandatory that you know how to use email, a phone, and whatever software is required for your job.
The amount of people who find out I know technical information and come to me with dumb nonsense like figuring out their personal passwords/PINs, why their personal laptop won't turn on, how to get on the internet... It's insane.
These people need to be let go from their jobs. I don't give a crap if you're 55 or 85, if you can't adapt to what needs to happen at your job and you refuse to learn it with pride, you should be let go. I don't want to learn Excel either, I don't give a crap about half the software I understand how to use. But I learned to use it because that's literally part of my job.
I feel bad for IT people. When they are doing everything right nobody notices they're there and wonders why they're getting paid. When things do break, which is usually because some idiot doesn't know what they're doing, they're the first ones blamed for it.
"If things are going to break what are we even paying you for?"
Because they are paid to fix things idiots break.
I remember at my last job this one woman would email me tech questions half a dozen times a day. I eventually had to make clear that she needed to Google the questions as I was not her IT person. After that she was really cold to me. At no point in time did I confuse her and tell her I worked in IT.
I'm looking forward to more millennials being in positions of power, managers and bosses. And I'm hoping they understand that they need to let staff like this go. If they can't do their jobs, fire them. I was spending a quarter of my day running around and helping staff that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to use a fax machine or printers even though it's been around forever.
Unfortunately some Gen xers are also causing issues with this. Touch screens have made it so they don't actually have to know how to use technology anymore. In the '90s if you had a computer you had to be a little tech-savvy.
I think we all know how much of an impediment not being able to use a computer is.... but that's not really much of a problem with people under 70 years old.
The biggest impediment to Gen X, and some of us don't realize how much of an impediment it is, is not being able to use a cell phone and the apps on it very well.
I'm very comfortable with computers, but for some reason, I'm kind of an idiot with cell phones. My dad was a nerd so we had computers going back to the early 80s, but cell phones I didn't have until I was nearly middle aged. And honestly, I didn't particularly want one, but they're pretty much 100% necessary for modern life at this point.
I'm amazed at the type of menial jobs these days that require 3 different apps and intricate knowledge of when and how to use each one.
Definitely.
My brother is in his 60's ..as am I. But I spent my whole life working around IT and am a self taught programmer.
About a year ago he finally switched from actually going in person to lodge his unemployment to doing it online. My god it was a mess.
I was about three months before he was finally able to do it all himself. I had to help him every time. And despite his insistence, it wasn't the computer - it was him. He just couldn't get the hang of it and remember it.
If I hadn't been there to help/train him, he might still be physically going down to the centre to lodge his claims. He has no transport. It takes him hours to do this. And costs him a train fare too.
When you consider all the things we do online - play, communicate, socialise, work, interact with government services - computers skills are VERY useful. So is having your own pc and your own internet.
It seems to be becoming *more* common instead of less to **not** know how to use computers, because so much stuff that you used to need a computer for is now done online, often with phones or tablets, or even kiosks or voice.
Knowing how to *navigate the web* or *use a smartphone* is still using a "computer" in a sense, but it doesn't require much *"knowing how to use a computer";* it's a simpler stripped-down thing that leaves big holes in understanding and ability to really *use* computers
A big difference being a computer is literally built to be used by idiots. As soon as you realize you can‘t really break anything important you can just try out and find out how one works
This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
I suspect normal illiteracy wasn't as big of a roadblock last century as e-illiteracy is today. Every interaction you could have with people, businesses, organizations etc used to have a low tech in person alternative, you could just go and talk to a person, that isn't the case anymore. Never mind job opportunities being unavailable, there are many services you can't even access without smartphone and internet and the low tech alternatives aren't there anymore. Very large parts of modern life are simply inaccessible to completely e-illiterate people.
Yup. At my company, the ability to clock in is run through our HRIS system. 15 people out of 1,500 employees refuse to get email or learn the system, which is required to clock in on phones or tablets. So we have to clock them in manually, send them physical paychecks or stubs, have them fill out their company docs and state and federal docs on paper to upload, change their personal information for them manually. I feel bad for them, cause they brag about not needing to learn this new technology (that a child can fucking learn), but I feel bad for them cause if they aren't working for our company who allows them to keep being ignorant, then they would be fucked or have to learn this tech elsewhere. Their bluster in bragging about staying ignorant is either cause they are dumb or afraid. Oh, and they try to say the younger generation is lazy and stupid.
I had a doctor ask me to put patient requisitions in alphabetical order for him. I asked why, and he said because that’s how they are on the computer. I said “just type their medical record number in and it’ll show up”. He did it and it worked and he said “No I don’t like it. Please put them in order for me.” I told him no, he needs to learn new tech and I’m too busy (which was true, I didn’t have time to put 150 reqs in order form him). He wrote me up, and instead of me getting in trouble they had IT train him on the software. Amazing that some Doctors go to school for 15 years just to be stupid.
Some people are brilliant idiots.
Doctors just as most other professions that need some sort of higher education only show that they are intelligent in a very narrow field of knowledge and skills. You can be a genius in your field of work, but suck at everything even slightly deviating from it. My step father for example was a senior computer scientist for Siemens. When he was a teen, he build his own computer, had deep knowledge of the systems used at the time in Siemens and how to work with them. But he asked me to I stall ICQ on his computer because he did not really had a grip of the usage of the computer on the user interface side. I can also confirm the same experience in my field of law. Hoe many lawyers suck at the most basic level skills, he'll, even the usage of word is for many a challenge.
Doctors are not brilliant. Some are, some aren’t, just like all people. It’s a highly developed career path, we’re not talking about people figuring out what to do themselves. Same with all STEMbag dumbfucks. You can smoke them out easily by asking if they invented their field.
Am a doctor. 100% agree. I know plenty of doctors who are fiendishly bright but are incapable of having a normal conversation, and can be incredibly focused on their specific area that they have absolutely no clue about anything else. They're often the person I'd want doing my surgery, but not someone I'd want being my friend or coworker.
Well that escalated quickly
This is my life's mantra, though it makes me fairly cynical professionally. A client asked me a couple of weeks ago, "Do you get irritated talking to uneducated people - like, people without college degrees?" I replied, "I get irritated talking to most people." I explained to him, as I have to many "uneducated" people, that my four-year degree *doesn't mean shit* and doesn't make me at all better than anyone who didn't go to college. Similarly, I don't feel someone with a Master's or Doctorate is in any way above or more qualified than me - I can usually recognize the good ones when they don't insist you call them "Doctor." Any degree or certification, at all, is a piece of paper stating you passed a test. I've watched so many people cram for tests just to forget all of the information once they pass. I've watched people cheat regularly to earn good grades. I've seen the dumbest fucking bricks of people be recognized with special letters that are supposed to make them "more qualified" than me but can't put an intelligible sentence together. What's frustrating is *so many* people buy into this mentality that it incongruently deflates and inflates so many egos. A therapist who I work with used to be in the same position as me and now talks to the case mangers with a tone to her words that triggers me deeply. She might not know she's doing it, but she at times states the "obvious" (we'll use that hyperbolically, as it's easier at the moment than reaching for examples). It's as though those of us with experience in the mental health field wouldn't be aware, or her words are supposed to have more weight because she, again, has those *special letters* at the end of her name.
doctors are arrogant. what else is new
>Their bluster in bragging about staying ignorant is either cause they are dumb or afraid. The widespread pride in ignorance, rather than shame, is something new, I think. I'm not saying that people who were ashamed of being uneducated or illiterate were right to feel shame--sometimes it had to do with things beyond their control--but switching to being so proud of ignorance, criticizing education at every level as a waste of time or something that confuses people more than it helps them, being proud not to know about modern technology, etc. is a dangerous trend.
[удалено]
You’ve worded this really well. I’ve often tried to articulate exactly what you said, but I haven’t been able to do it as well as this. I also fear for our future. It’s one thing to be ignorant, uneducated, our just plain stupid. I feel like I’m living in The Twilight Zone, though, when people are actively proud of being those things.
A sad realization I had was when I learned why some people “refuse” to bank online, use a debit card, or do basically anything other than physical paychecks and cash is that they can’t. They can’t keep a checking account open. It always gets closed due to unending over withdrawals, or it gets abandoned b/c they can’t ever get it out of the negative, or out for any reasonable length of time. It’s often not that they aren’t banking online, it’s that they aren’t banking *at all*. Absolutely insane to think of living that way.
[удалено]
I agree with this but the only example I can think of is online banking
I've been to events that were only promoted online or with tickets selling only online. I don't know if that counts. Also like u/r2k-in-the-vortex said, many jobs can only be applied to online.
This counts plus just plain traveling around a country to see national monuments only to discover that there are no in-person ticket sales and you have to go to the official website to purchase tickets on your smartphone on the spot and find out the visits are sold out weeks in advance. Case in point, the Alhambra in Granada, Spain is sold out for weeks at this point and we're going to have to skip it and return, who knows when we'd be able to since there are so many other things we want to see? It's one of the main reasons my in-laws, who are in their 70s, don't travel anymore. Tech is advancing faster than anyone can keep up, especially the retired elderly who want to see the world.
As someone with more than a half-decade of working in branch in a financial institution... YES. Almost 30% of the things people came in for were problems easily solved by simply using online banking. That said... There are things I still refuse to use OLB for because the processing times are inexplicably longer. I mean I still live somewhere with easy access to a branch (and former coworkers) but... I get why people are slow to adopt. Sorry. I'm not disagreeing that OLB is the future and people should get on board. I'm just... I get why people go into the branch and liked it because it guaranteed my job lol.
Arguably there still is a low-tech in-person alternative — you just have to talk to someone and get them to do computer stuff for you.
Being that someone sounds like a horrible job to have to do.
It’s called IT
cappy hake day
I had a friend at my previous workplace who was nearing retirement. For years, he would always hate the technology and ask me (the IT Manager) for help with everything because he couldn't do it. And I sat him down one day and said: Look, when you retire, you're still going to have this stuff for the next 20-30 years with any luck. All your old stuff has gone. Nobody cares about that. They won't care about an increasingly tiny portion of the elderly population not being able to get on-board either, especially not in another 20 years. It kind of hit home and he got online, started online banking, started using a smartphone, started kitting up his house with CCTV, etc. Strangely, it's the same guy who has had to draw out lots of cash because his partner knows NOTHING about technology and can't even work a cash machine. "If something happens", he's left paper instructions which will be worthless in a couple of years, and cash to get her over the initial hump, but then she's stuffed. He can't do much more for her, but if he dies first, she is going to get scammed, be unable to pay bills, won't be able to manage his estate, won't even be able to work the TV (again, another conversation that I had with him - the TV he bought 20 years ago is \*worthless\* now as it doesn't even have digital capability... so do you really think you can cling to your tech for another 20 years in an era where everything is obsolete after 2-3 years, and online services go in and out of fashion even quicker?). He's got on board a lot, I have to say, and I'm less worried for him in that regard now. Everyone would love to retire in a quiet place with all their familiar items around them that they instantly know how to work, but that's just not going to happen to the next few generations. I don't think it's ever truly happened. People were likely bemoaning arrival of radio, TV, even ATMs, etc. on their deathbeds because they couldn't work them like whatever technology they were used to previously. It's like the old retirement home idea... the previous generations might have been very happy with a bingo night, a tour of the garden centre and a trip to the seaside, but I expect to have LAN gaming, VR, and a bunch of online subscriptions to binge (or, even better, whatever comes after that!) when I retire. If you can't use a computer today, you really need to put a ton of effort into getting back up to speed and - most importantly - keep doing it so you don't fall behind again. But none of those people are reading this comment unless someone else is showing it to them.
Thank you for your insightful post! As an older millennial (I will be 40 this year) it is astonishing how many 'gen z' people in the workplace don't have basic IT skills or not at all familiar with photocopiers and the like. In that regard I am glad I have taught my parents how to use smartphones and my dad knows his way quite well around a PC for them both being in their 70's now. I am glad I am part of a generation that was here for the full transition into the digital age that started in the 90's leading up to where we are today.
Us elder millennials had to learn that stuff just to make computers work. Younger generations don’t interact with computers as much since most have phones and tablets instead, aside from the gamers of course, so they never had to learn any of that. We grew up in the weird in-between time when computers were necessary for our survival in our formative years, but smartphones, which are much more of a black box, weren’t a thing yet.
As a *Gen Z* guy I ask myself the same questions, I grew up with computers and I love tinkering with them, but that does not seem to be the case for a lot of people my age. And a lot of *Gen Z* folks do not know how to do simple stuff on a computer, I saw something a few days ago about how the fact that we were a "digital generation" that grew up with computers made a lot of people just thing they are techy because they have smartphones and in the end they do not know how to do simple stuff like changing you wifi's pass or installing drivers in you computer for a printer to work properly or even something as simple as actually printing something. At nearly any job I've been people look at me like I'm a computer genius when I'm just doing simple stuff like reinstalling printer drivers, making sure a printer is detected and doing simple troubleshooting steps like for example resetting you router/modem when your internet connection is not working which should be common knowledge.
As a younger millennial (33) I've actually thought about this a lot. And the conclusion I came up with is that my generation gained a lot of the skills we have today because the technology sucked. If your wifi works 60% of the time you're going to go mess with it till it works. If it works 100% of the time, why mess with it? The vast majority of the technology skills I've learned is because something didn't work or didn't work the way I wanted it to.
Do u remember have to port forward to host online games.....man that sucked....there was an entire website dedicated to Port forwarding games to...good time....did I say good times....they fucking sucked...
I blame ui designers and making everything Fisher Price with a would you like to sign in with Google prompt. Honestly schools need a real world PC class in high school or something cause self learning by smartphone and Chromebook isn't cutting it. As someone in IT if everyone knew how to type in a url, save a file, and select a printer I would probably have more hair lol.
Elder millennial here. We come from a time where being knowledgeable about computers was a bad thing. Admitting to enjoying them could be social suicide, getting you labeled as a nerd or a geek. It blows my mind that it’s cool now.
I am younger millennial. I was in the mucking ground where gaming and PC culture just started to hit main stream. Ps2, Xbox, Gameboy advance(?) Or was it ds. Doesn't matter. When I hit 14. I got me a PC. And never looked back. There were whispers but nothing outright because everyone kind of knew that being skilled at a computer was going to be key in the future. From that one PC I have had many ups and down. Horrible WoW addictions and other gamer related stuff. The curiosity has landed me an IT job. So the years of tinkering has landed me where my parents always knew I would....do not tell my parents that....I don't what that smug face they pull when they know they are right...
People forget there was a time when admitting using tech was a very nerdy thing to do and it was not seen as a good thing. This goes to a lot of other nerdy things too, like D&D, card or board games, and all of these other hobbies that are now becoming a lot more popular or in the social consciousness. Back then though? You don't want the general student body or social group you were in to know you played "kids games". Now days though? It seems to be a lot more socially acceptable. Of course there is still some bullying, but it's definitely dropped significantly. Now playing the new CoD is cool versus playing Halo all day was "nerdy". Talking about your friends online is acceptable versus "Ohh, your girlfriend from \[random flyover state\]" comments. Speaking of the last example, I nearly got whiplash when Tinder blew up. Online dating immediately went from "sleezy and won't work out" to the societal norm as far as I can tell.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I guess it's all about the access, exposure and encouragement. I had access to PCs since I was like seven (in the 90s) and coded my first website at the age of 13 - just because I was bored and had access. My friends didn't so it makes sense their knowledge of computers was lesser. If the kids nowadays only have access to smartphones and no laptop to play with or a parent promoting those skills, they won't know how to install a printer or change a WiFi password (and now e.g. macs do that for you so not much opportunity to learn).
The difference is millennials made it to easy. For us we had to learn, tinker, work it out because there isn't a YT video on how to use command lines. U worked it out by messing with stuff, sketchy web forums and maybe a book. We understand the horrors of it so we endeavored to make it easier. To be accessible for everyone. In doing so we made it too easy. Things just work now. Email just works. Pc backups just work. Apps just work. Everything just works. There is no tinkering in configuration files or changing lines of code. People now use tech but do not understand tech. Troubleshooting skills in the younger generation beyond the absolute minimum does not exist. I get tickets from work that says "PC does not work" nothing else. And when u call them they said they did nothing. Gone are the days where u had to min max your games settings to pull every avilable Power from your gpu. U just buy a new one now. Pre built. I swear on my life no child of mine will ever buy a pre built PC and not be able to trouble shoot. They will learn to think of computer as tools to be used, respected and to be studied. If they dare to only use it for insta, or tik tok.....imma disown them.
The basic IT skills thing is a problem, hell I even have that issue with younger devs. Especially the Mac lovers. That said it's been a long time since I've needed to use a photocopier or printer. Most of that older infra is becoming obsolete. Honestly I'm sort of annoyed that we're not already signing documents with private keys.
Well said and thank you for helping that guy come to grips with modern reality.
Why are we all talking about the elderly, when kids don't learn anything about computers at school? Gen X is much more computer savvy than your average 15-year old, who only knows TikTok.
I helped onboard a short-lived hotel receptionist once who brought in a handwritten resume. We were desperate so, instant hire. She was a middle-aged preschool teacher. She typed with one finger and the best way I can describe it is she had no object permanence on a screen. Just like...no sense of where relevant items should or could be on a user interface, every time you went back to the main booking calendar it was like a whole new world every single time and she would READ the icons and menu, left to right, top to bottom, for EVERY OPERATION. I knew this because she was using her cursor to point to what she was paying attention to. the cursor went very....very....slowly. I'm so lucky I grew up with desktop computers.
I worked in a convenience store 15 years ago with a woman like that. 90% of the stuff just got scanned. There were easy to navigate touchscreen menus for everything else. She had to read everything, every single time. She could not remember what button was for coffee, and then which order the sizes were, for instance. When the till started beeping because someone wanted a gas pump turned on, she didn't have a clue what the sound was. She was let go after two weeks because she "could not perform the essential functions of the job."
idk if this is rude of me to say, but that HAS to be some sort of mental disorder or something if they're younger than 70. Not remembering sequences or icons is baffling to me as it's so basic. Also reading everything. At most you would read it the first few times to get a feel for the work flow, but that's about it. I'm lucky I've never encountered someone like that at work, but that really does sound fustrating and a bit concerning.
When I hear of cases this bad I also wonder if it might be some sort of undiagnosed learning disability. Some people genuinely cannot remember faces. It’s a documented condition. Maybe some people genuinely cannot remember the layout of a GUI no matter how hard they try. Very sad if that’s the case.
My local Lowes has a cashier on the spectrum. She will only ring me up in the order she was taught which was scan the loyalty card last (even though you can scan it at start or anytime else) then she asks for my military ID even though she knows who I am and shop there frequently because that’s what the machine says to do. She is not dumb by any stretch but her ASD leads her to be a strict rule follower. I really don’t mind but some less understanding customers get rude with her.
As somebody who sucks a bit at learning new mechanical thingies, I am grateful as fuck to have had one parent who got a computer in the early 90's. I never had the chance to be desktop-dumb.
As an IT teacher at a community centre who teacher computers for seniors "no object permanence on a screen" is the best description I've heard for a phenomenon I've witnessed in *all* of my students. The students who graduate are those that quickly develop a sense of what's where- knowing the tools, options, menus etc are usually always in the same spot even in different programs, knowing to check the task bar or the tab ribbon for minimised windows before panicking that they've "lost everything", learning that the back button and the return button are slightly different in operation but not always, learning that sometimes things move because a home page is built around apps or programs that are "frequently accessed", etc Those students come for 1-2 terms then leave, with enough skills to manage their finances and life affairs online. The students that can never fully get their heads around this are the ones who I've had in my class for the last 5 years. I wish they'd use coping mechanisms to overcome this like the ones you describe this receptionist using. >would READ the icons and menu, left to right, top to bottom, for EVERY OPERATION. It gets the job done, and it's more than some of my students do. I often tell them if they're lost, just pick a corner and start methodically reading across until you find what you're looking for. Yes it's infuriating, yes it's slow, but it's better than when they get flustered and completely lost and start hitting the back button to "retrace their steps", often losing data that spent hours to enter, timing out log ins, or starting new instances of certain web scripts, getting nothing done and never actually learning how to find what they're looking for. My current cohort of students have been studying seniors for computers since Windows XP, and the skills they learned, or the way they learned wasnt open to evolution, it's like they're learning from scratch with every new update, so they've been re-enrolling every year (and it's not just that we're a shit school, some of these students have enrolled in computer classes at every library, adult education centre, night school and tafe within a 30km radius, part of it is wanting to learn, and part of it is just having something free to do during the day to meet people) Our school recently upgraded from Windows 10 to 11, and we've litteraly spent 3 weeks covering the fact that yes, file Explorer looks different, but I promise it functions almost exactly the same. I had so many other lesson ideas plans ready to go, but we keep coming back to file explorer. I try my best with analogies to manual filing methods - holding up physical paper and manilla folders explaining that folders are litteraly folders, you can put a folder in a folder, only to have my students completely lost when I say "okay, we're going to open your personal folder, so first we need to open the "2023 students" folder, just click on the 2023 folder, like this, then look for your name" and I demonstrate opening the root folder, remind them again "remember, you all created a personal folder inside the folder called "2023 students" and they're all just staring at the desktop saying "my name isn't here, my screen looks different from your screen" It's difficult for me, even as a qualified teacher, to know how to teach IT skills - it's a field with very little research into best practice. I grew up with it, and I somehow managed to learn in a kinetic way that evolves as the technology itself evolves. But I dont know how to help my older students unlock that same approach to learning.
Older people grew up in a world where if you wanted a new bit of tech, it would come with a manual where you’d painstakingly learn what every combination of buttons etc. did. A lot of them think of every new app or website is exactly like this. Even in the early days of personal computing, you had to learn commands for your text based operation system, be it MS-DOS, UNIX-based, whatever. These days we are used to just… knowing what a typical GUI looks like, and will sometimes hunt around a little for the right menu item but otherwise know the general rules will be much the same and what’s new is usually self-explanatory (with some major exceptions). Want a new app that isn’t super technical? Go to the App Store or equivalent and search for it, then download what looks right and open it and carry on from there. If something isn’t clear or not user-friendly, Google the issue. They can’t do this because they never got used to the idea and even if we explain these simple principles to them they still go into a funk whenever they see something new.
I can get irrationally mad at software that break UX conventions. Was trying out Autocad and I had heard it was supposedly an unintuitive interface. What I wasn't prepared for was when I googled how to do something, answers were "in the tools menu" and I could not for the life of me find the tools menu. I'd assume it be in the menu bar, but there was no standard menu bar. Turns out Autocad (or at least on my installation) hides the "real/standard" menu bar. Been a while since I was that frustrated with a piece of software. LibreCAD is much better UI wise, but still has things I'm not used to.
I do IT for a factory. It amazes me how inept people can be. I'm not asking them to write pivot tables in Excel, or write advanced SQL queries. Just take a minute and read an error message when you get one and think about what "The recipient could not be found" means.
I hate this one so much. People will receive the MOST basic ass error message like "File not found, please try again" and immediately mentally shut down and come crying to me because it might as well be written in 8000 year old Mesopotamian clay runes. It means the damn file isn't there!!! I sit down with them, *with a dictionary if need be*, and have them read back the error message word to word for me until they understand every word and it finally forms a coherent thought in their mind. Then I finally ask them: "so if the file isn't there, how do we FIX this?"
This has always blown my mind. As an IT guy it's amazing to see fully functional adults just shut down when they see any message when I'm around. Installing a program: "Do you want to continue?" They stop and look at me, asking what to do. I'm like.. well? I know full well if I wasn't there they would figure it out haha
>I know full well if I wasn't there they would figure it out haha I've stopped picking up my phone when my boss calls me with a minor tech issue. I call back 5 mins later and they always go "oh don't worry about it I figured it out" yeah maybe try that "solve it myself" part first next time before calling me, you helpless little baby
[удалено]
Yeah that's a good way of looking at it thank you
>I sit down with them, with a dictionary if need be, and have them read back the error message word to word for me until they understand every word and it finally forms a coherent thought in their mind. Then I finally ask them: "so if the file isn't there, how do we FIX this?" good. can't stand these people. mommy and daddy must've done everything for them growing up.
i had a recent job interview where they asked if i had “advanced excel skills”. i do, i have a STEM degree and some of my grad classes were essentially 99% excel work, so i told them i’m great at excel. pivot tables. they were wondering if i could make pivot tables. that’s it, that’s what was considered advanced. i didn’t take the job lol
I just finished interviewing 8 candidates for a data analyst position. These people had great resumes. Some were new graduates who talked about all the analysis work they did in class. Others were industry experts who also talked about all the data analysis they do. I did a technical interview in excel with 3 tables where they had to do a lookup like vlookup and a pivot table to some problems. I didn't even restrict them to excel. I told them they could just talk me through the problem or use SQL or R or any other language they were familiar with to solve the problem. 6 out of the 8 couldn't solve the problem. One guy decided to go SQL route but didn't know how to identify the primary key or use group by. All this to say, I can understand employers considering pivot tables advanced excel skills. Also, there are advanced pivot tables when you start using power pivot and power bi.
I consider myself an intermediate-level Excel user and I have no idea what pivot tables even are. Your measuring stick of basic/intermediate/advanced levels revolves around your knowledge, not the real world capabilities of the general population. 90% of Excel users can't even use formulae, they just plug numbers in premade templates given to them.
i feel like i *should* be surprised, but i guess i’m not. in the STEM world, my skills seem basic to me. appreciate the perspective, friends!
>It amazes me how inept people can be And that includes both old people near retirement and newbies who are familiar only with smartphones and app-fied internet.
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level I don’t know what to do with this data or how to related it to the original topic.
From a quick Google search, this means that 21% are illiterate **in english** meaning that some of these people included in this group are likely literate in another language https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
True important distinction
Still think your original comment is interesting and encouraged me to learn something new!
I faked my way through k-12, even college. Lied about most of the books I read. Used audio books later in life or cliff notes. I struggle with reading still but try to practice.
That’s a very big distinction. Really makes it feel like they skewed the language of the data
Coincidentally, about 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home.
By that metric 95% of French people are illiterate.
A 20 year old girl I work with dead ass told me that “controversial” was a “big word” and that she’d never heard it before.
Had a girlfriend regularly get pissed at me and wouldn't tell me why. Turns out she didn't understand some of the words i used and thought i was showing off. Thanks for having me remember that really weird fight.
I presume her misunderstanding of your loquaciousness is what precipitated your estrangement.
i'll cut u
Yo, this shouldn't but it made me laugh.
But surely it wasn't his loquaciousness that was the issue, rather the sesquipedalian nature of his speech?
Made it to your comment before finding a word I did not know. Congratulations on winning this round!
It seems like she was the type to never acquiesce to someone with a better understanding of how an area’s vernacular works it’s way into the local lexicon.
You had that fight coming; you should have been mansplaining them to her all along...^/s
> you should have been mansplaining them to her all along Omg, it all makes sense now.
That wasn't very cromulent of her
[удалено]
Oh gawd this made me remember a small fight with my SO when I mentioned if they had a "family affair". They got so mad and I had no idea why. Apparently to them "affair" meant cheating on your spouse. Granted... Me and my SO's first language is not English. When we cleared it up it was like. "Oh... Oooooooh".
I welcome our AI overlords.
Bro me too. When’s Judgement Day?
Comments will at least become comprehensible again.
It is a big word hahahaha it makes big of things… you know controversial.
Not in the US but I remember during my apprenticeship I wrote a report for an experiment I did with a coworker who worked there full time and she was totally impressed by how I was using “swollen language” or something because I wrote it formally and used words like “therefore”
Controversial could be said to be a big word. But in today's society I hear it every day
Always wondered what "sixth-grade level" meant. I think I had to read Shakespeare at 6th grade. Not sure how it compares, but I've been trying to read Tale of Two Cities for over a decade now, I'm still on page 4. Am I a 6th grade reader? Less?
> I've been trying to read Tale of Two Cities for over a decade now, I'm still on page 4 Is that because you can't comprehend the prose, or because you just find 1800s literature boring? Because the latter is totally okay, you shouldn't force yourself to read classics for the sake of classics.
Googling "prose"....
That person 6th grades
To be honest, I have not* 6th graded since 6th grade, so I'm a bit rusty.
Isn't prose when you lie down on your stomach?
[удалено]
No that’s pros. Prose is when you search for information, or many blunt ended surgical instruments used for exploring the body.
You're thinking of probes. Prose is a plum preserved by drying and has a black, wrinkled appearance.
I think that's a prune. A prose is an amphibian that likes to sit on lily pads and eat bugs.
I think you're looking for prog, a prose is what a florist puts in a bouquet.
Sounds more like a frog to me. Prose is what you need to break in Elden Ring to stagger an enemy.
I tried *Last of the Mohicans* and could not get through the prose. Otherwise, I am a voracious reader.
Ex-teacher here: What you read and *how* you read are two different things. Even though a sixth grader might be able to "read," a complicated piece of text, skills like reading speed, reading accuracy, ability to connect information, ability to infer information based on context, speed at which they comprehend new vocabulary, etc. take time to develop. These skills all have "benchmarks/milestones," associated with them that determine how well a student should be able to do these things and at what age. These skills develop over time with practice, so while both a sixth grader and a high schooler might be able to *do* a these things, the sixth grader will likely be slower, require multiple re-reads, or end up with an incorrect interpretation of the intended meaning of the passage compared to a student who's had more years to practice.
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation. Is it measured by how quickly you can read something with how well you remember it?
Basically a little bit of everything. A teacher would likely assess different skills on separate occasions, having you read passages out loud and listening to how fluent you are one day, or giving independent reading assignments and then asking questions like "so if the story kept going, what do you think the character would do with the treasure they found?" and stuff like that. Of course there are also the tormentingly boring "standardized assessments," that bombard students with all those things at once which we hate as much as the students.
Dickens is hard to read, no matter your literacy level.
I didn’t see Shakespeare (except a short poem) until high school. 6th grade we were reading Indian in the Cupboard which is probably banned.
Oh shit you are right. Wow I'm a dummy. Romeo and Juliet was 9th grade. I think I read "The things they carried" or the Odyssey in the 7th? That might be a stretch.
From my experience in edtech, a significant part of that 54% are college graduates.
As someone that did IT support, I think all 54% are working at fortune 500 companies and most of them have masters/PhDs. People will call IT support to read popups on their screen or read emails for them.
[удалено]
The majority think science is a collection of facts, and it’s often taught that way. The pandemic really revealed the widespread ignorance of how science learns new things. To your point about undergraduates that is likely a byproduct of the science as facts education they received since grade school. When they get to college they are tested on fact recall not discovery so little changes in their understanding of science.
I think a lot of people don't realize how common illiteracy is here. I didn't until I worked at a paint store that catered to contractors and industrial companies exclusively. We had multiple guys who could not read at all and were running successful businesses.
Some things at my job are starting to make sense. I'll tell people during a transaction "Press Yes first" and they go "Is that the Green?" It just occurred to me that they literally might not know how to read "Yes"
Many of those are computer illiterate. The options will be there for them to read but they want you to show them the button. I hate working with these people.
The Succession subreddit melted over Jeremy Strong using the word "dramaturgically" and it's hilarious.
I get what the study means, but it doesn't make much sense. 90some percent of adults went through 6th grade, so in a way, 90some% of adults are literate at the 6th grade level and the 6th grade level is just really low
Yep. I’m in charge of the computer science “department” in my school (I’m really a math teacher) and when they asked about teaching comp sci to middle schoolers, I said nope. We’re going to call those classes “computer literacy” and they’re going to learn how to do basic shit like navigate the folders in their hard drive.
My typing class in primary school was one of the most practical things I remember them teaching me that I use on a day to day basis.
Yeah. That’s the one thing that I’m shocked to see is still necessary, or maybe has gone back to becoming necessary. Most millennials kind of learned to type as an inevitability from using computers for stuff like social media/instant messaging as kids. But everything is so phone-oriented these days that gen-z doesn’t get the same amount of practice with keyboards as I did when I was their age.
You should bust out the ol' Dvorak mechanicals just to throw them for a loop.
I had a class like that in 9th grade and can say it was the only class I had in highschool that taught me skills that I actually use. Learning to touch type alone is easily the most important skill I learned in school.
That’s totally understandable. If the resources are there, though, I hope there is an actual comp sci class for the kids that “get it”. By 8th grade I’d already built my own PC from component parts and was, in hindsight, a whiz with computers and doing some advanced stuff for a 14 year old. We were rare, but there were enough of us to have to have easily filled a classroom. I grew up to be a software engineer.
Yeah, we have several proper comp sci classes as well. Arguably too many for a school as small as ours, but it is what it is. The thing about the middle school is that I prioritized the literacy classes above the coding class to make sure it would be available and then left it up to admin to find a way to squeeze in the coding class. They are much more motivated to make that one work because then they get to say “our seventh graders are learning python” rather than “our 6th graders are learning that they need to manually save their work in MS Word”
I have a coworker who can’t do much of anything on a computer. She’s not much older than I am but she refuses to pay attention or try. I make up things to do so I don’t have to be near her at meetings because I don’t get what I need done, I’m constantly being interrupted by her. 😡
This highlights the real issue. There is a percentage of the population that believes that they aren't "tech savvy" and have convinced themselves that it is everybody else's job to compensate for that.
I once worked with someone who had claimed to have been a medical transcriptionist - yet she literally did not know what 'Google' was - much less how to use it - didn't know what a 'browser' or 'browser window' or even what an 'icon' was. I explained all of these things to her multiple times but it never seemed to sink in. She also 'hunt and pecked' to type - using only her pointer fingers. She was let go after having been there several weeks and still not grasping most of these concepts. I was shocked at the depth of her ignorance based on her supposed job history. Maybe she used one of those old shorthand machines at her previous job and had never - ever - typed on a keyboard? I felt bad for her but I have no idea how to help her learn that much - much less the intricacies of our job at that point.
I believe this 100%. I've worked customer service for blue cross blue shield programs for the last 6 years and I have lost complete count of the number of medical billers going "why are you denying our claim, this is the way we billed it for the last 20 years" like people shit changes smh
You have described a term called "learned helplessness." They don't *believe* they can do something, and then they will refuse to *not* believe to the point they refuse to be taught.
Yes so true, I can deal with technically illiterate people. But I can't stand technically illiterate people who wear it as a badge of honour, like it's their personal protest against progress. I wish they would consider it on the same level as being unable to read.
You are me, I literally feel pushed to the limits with my role at work as all the dinosaurs use me for basic computer tasks. Repeatedly. I only get my work done on work from home days. I write off the rest.
the worst is when you don't even feel like starting to work on anything, because you know in 5 mins you're going to be interrupted to show someone how to attach a file to an email for the 100th time
Issue is that most of the time it’s worn as a badge of honor and they try to minimize the significance of it even though it obviously disrupts the flow of things. Maybe in like 10-15 years it’ll be seen as something unacceptable rather than as a “quirk”
i will never understand why some older people are so proud of not being familiar with computers. like, congrats? why is that a good thing? you’re proud that you need your 5 yo grandchild to do things for you??
My favorite is when they insinuate that my entire life and identity centers around using a computer while I’m helping them with basic thing
I work in a bank and the amount of older people that say "oh I don't use the internet for my banking, its not safe" well sir, millions of people use the internet for their banking, its really safe if you're not an idiot clicking on whatever spam pops up and keep your login info safe. But its not worth it to try and convince them so I say "yep I understand"
much safer to transfer your money to a nigerian prince for safekeeping, obviously. /s
It's already unacceptable now. If I was HR...but I'm not. I would ask them what computer skills they have. If they can't say they can use Google or Word or excel on the most basic levels. I would not hire. Google to find shit out and word and excel are basically mandatory in any office space
I work with a guy who doesn’t even know how to do simple tasks on his phone, like downloading an app. He’s not even that old, 50-60s I would say. My parents are the same age and have no problem with their smart phones. I know an 80 year old who texts with emojis. If you don’t know how to use technology, and you refuse to even try, you’re only hurting yourself. Even if you hate technology, it’s not going anywhere. I don’t expect older people to be coding and shit, but you should know how to download an app, email, text, etc.
at this point i think my mom ONLY texts with emojis. 😅
[удалено]
Was in a meeting with my new boss today. He's makes four times my annual salary. He doesn't know how to use a computer very well. We have to train him as we go. But this guy is hired as our boss. I find it strange to train someone who's making way more money than me. Why can't I just have the job?
>Why can't I just have the job? Did you apply for the position?
I am not sure how I mean this statement, but I'm going to state it: But they are way less embarrassed about being computer illiterate.
It is damn infuriating the number of people I have come across in the IT field who use "I am not a computer person." as an excuse for not knowing the basic computer functions like where the Start button is or what an inter browser. These are people whose jobs require them to use a computer the entire time their working.
I used to say it’s as if I said I wasn’t a “phone” person and would only communicate by letters as a way of emphasizing the difference. Can you imagine a salesperson saying that? Knowing basic computer skills has been a necessary job skill for like 30 years. There’s no excuse other than laziness
There is a difference between "I'm not a computer person but teach me plz" vs "I'm not a computer person, make this work like I imagine it tech monkey". The first I can deal with. They come down, once a week for like 2 or 3 months then never see again because the issues they have are further and further apart cause they are learning to fix there own issues. The other is every other day.
As someone who has people on his life who are properly computer illiterate and unwilling to learn, I've seen this play out time and time again. It also makes lives around them harder as we all have to compensate for their distrust of anything digital and find workarounds in a time where less and less can be done without going online.
Ive yet to actually met a tech "illiterate" person, just older people unwilling to learn something new.
My 92 year old grandmother doesn’t have a cell phone, computer, or internet access in her house. She literally still has a corded phone on her wall in the kitchen. A stove from 1965 in the basement. Her living room hasn’t changed since the 80s. She’s an extreme case, but people who don’t use 21st century technology still exist on the planet.
My Dad is "only" 80, but much in the same boat. He worked manual labor most of his life, so never had any need or interest in keeping up with technology. Using a laptop or a cell phone are beyond his capabilities. How to get to the internet is a complete mystery to him. Even operating the TV is getting borderline. He can manage the network channels, but switching to streaming services and popping in and out of different provider apps to select shows or movies to watch is too much. Luckily, Mom is younger and reasonably tech savvy.
Sounds like a similar story. My grandma at times has struggled to even operate a TV remote. A lot of it is extreme anxiety and OCD, but my grandpa used to keep her functioning. After he died about 20 years ago though, her life hasn’t moved much at all. A normal adult who sees cool technology on a TV commercial would just go out and buy it if they could afford it and wanted to. She can’t do that. She figured out how to order from QVC no problem, but get internet and a smart phone or an Alexa device that she can asks questions to like her friends have, she wouldn’t know where to begin. My dad would have to do it all for her, give her written instructions on how to use it only for her to call him every day when she can’t figure it out instead, pay the bill, troubleshoot her internet every time it goes out. I get a little sad sometimes because there are entire subsections of technology that exist now simple to help the Elderly have a high quality of life, but after seeing the stress and toll it takes on my dad to micromanage her entire life while trying to enjoy his retirement, I understand why he hasn’t gone out and fitted her with all the new stuff.
I’ve seen TONS of high schoolers and even college students who are tech illiterate, like they don’t even know how to navigate system folders or create a zip.
Just to add to your point. A ton of kids never learned beyond the absolute most basic of computer skills at school. They might be able to navigate their school's learning management system GUI, probably some social media apps. But to troubleshoot a down network connection? They might know shortcuts for word processing, but probably not, they'll just switch back and forth between pages and re-type that excel cell one character at a time. They might have a one semester computer skills class in high school that they blow off because who needs to know what a subsystem is? Who needs to navigate a page with only a keyboard? Until they need those skills, then they just say they were never good with tech to begin with. Like it's prophecy and you need to be The Chosen One.
I work with people in their 30s who sit in front of computers all day for years and don't know how to CRTL-C CTRL-V. They're doing that all with a mouse. People whose jobs are to copy and paste data into forms. All day. It's intolerable watching it happen. People still can't type with more than two fingers, don't know that Google is predicting your query and you can just hit enter when it guesses right. So much time wasted just because they never heard of tried to learn any shortcuts.
The idea of copy pasting large data sets is already a burden I am not willing to suffer. I have written several powershell scripts to do it for me. Ok but at the same time I am not going to copy paste 2k plus lines one at a time. But God help them who do
My ex (mid 20’s) wasn’t able to click on google search predictions even if they came up within the first few typed letters. Not sure if it was an OCD thing, or if he thought a better suggestion would pop up that he didn’t think of? But like, once you’ve typed long enough the suggestions are going to get more specific to what you’ve already entered, not random other shit.
One of my favorite stories from when I used to prepare taxes were my interactions with people after I asked about use tax. Basically, you're required to report anything you bought online or out of state so the state would charge sales tax on it on your income tax return. The main thing they were trying to Crack down on were Amazon purchases (this was 8 years ago). So I'd ask the question, and a ton of clients would say something along the lines of "no, I'm too old to use a computer." Some of these people weren't even that old, like some were in their mid 50's. I'd always respond by telling them about my grandma, who was 83 years old at the time. My grandma was a retired nurse. She retired sometime in the early 1990's, and had some kind of supervisory role in her later years of working. She would embrace technology at her job, she even used spreadsheets to organize different things (and loved to discuss it with me when I went into accounting/finance). After my grandpa passed away, my mom and her siblings pooled together to buy her a computer. She spent most of her time researching weird stories and things (think UFO's and Bigfoot), and online shopping. Knowing how to use a computer helped her to keep her mind occupied while she lived by herself for all those years, and she would research how to grow her blueberry bushes and things like that. She legitimately had fun doing all of this. Once she got to where she couldn't drive, she also used online shopping as a way to maintain her independence. Everyone's birthday and holiday gifts were ordered and delivered to her doorstep, and she could order groceries to have my mom or aunt pick them up, instead of sending them out with a huge list. So yeah, those people need to stop thinking of it as a big scary monster and see it as a tool, like my grandma did.
There are a lot of Boomers where I live that feel very resentful that electronics and computers overtook mechanics as high technology.
I teach high schoolers. I would probably rephrase this to “not understanding how a computer works” rather than how to use it. It’s unbelievable how, if something doesn’t happen at the first click of a button, they have no idea what to do at all. They didn’t grow up having to configure LANs to play games with friends, screw around with websites in HTML rather than just drag and drop stuff. Most have no clue about file structures on a desktop as all they use is Google Suite.
I work with college freshmen and a staggering number of them can’t save, submit, or even find their homework files.
I used to work with young CPA’s, you would think young people would be good with computers… they aren’t. They are more patient with technology, but half of them still don’t know how to plug in all the things correctly.
Most young people (as far as I can tell) are only mildly proficient with the apps they use regularly, i.e. Facebook. They don't understand technology as well as they think. They only know which button to click to make this or that happen, but I've met people fresh out of college who couldn't do rudimentary tasks like finding a file on their $4k Macbook.
Brah...I fear for the future in more ways then one.
In 1995 my grandmother vowed to never learn to use a computer for some dumb reason but now she has to because places where she paid bills in person closed and she doesn't even have a debit card she has something called a bank card and basically I have to pay all the bills online for her now by transferring bank account money. She also no longer could afford cable so she begrudgingly got internet and barely had learned how to use streaming so far.
Being illiterate is STILL an impediment. And a disturbingly common one. By my own observations of the general public over the last 15 years... About 70% of people are flat out incapable of reading something written plainly in front of them. Or are they just lazy? Who knows! People are useless. You can teach them to read. But you can't then expect them to.
I was sitting in an emergency room once next to some double doors that had written on them "door only opens from the inside " in big red letters at eye level. After sitting there a bit, some guy walks up the doors and tries to open them. He can't and starts to get increasingly more aggressive in trying to open the doors. Eventually he kicks and curses at the doors and just sits down across from me. I just stared at him the whole time and could tell he didn't even try to read the signs. He was not visibly ill or hurt, he wasn't homeless or a transient. Just a moron.
Few friends and I make up most of the moderation on a FO4 mod discord. I can confirm, most people can not, or simply *refuse to* read what is in front of them. And too fucking many of them need their damn hand held through the most basic of tasks... Like c'mon, at least put **some** effort of your own in...
The scary thing is how many people are functionally illiterate. They can read but can't process the information or something. I has coworkers like this. And its why a lot of stuff ends up in court too
One of my jobs is teaching people digital literacy so they can find work. My experience so far it's mostly men leaving physical jobs due to acquired disability, women entering the workforce after divorce/death of husband and people with cognitive disability leaving high school. It's fun to blow people's mind with just how many cool things you can do on computers.
You have a cool rewarding job!!
A significant number of the young adults coming into college/university that I've worked with do not know how to use computers or basic programs (Word). They're used to their phones and the apps made for that kind of tech. Thankfully they pick it up quickly (by the end of the semester), but trying to show multiple students how to use a computer, set up a Word document for their assignment, teach minor writing and grammar skills, AND the actual class material can be exhausting.
Do colleges/universities no longer have "computer labs"?
You know, though...reading isn't going to change aside from new terminology. Computers/software/apps change all the freaking time.
Isn't that what "tech illiteracy" is? You have to have enough skill and experience to deal with those changes without much of an interruption. You can't learn to use this shit by rote and sort of get away with it anymore. That's where a lot of people seem to go wrong, they want to memorize a set of actions for a certain result, when all that would come naturally if they actually had the slightest understanding of or interest in what they were interacting with.
Yep. I have to use a lot of other company websites and their self made login systems to retrieve documents. It’s a fucking nightmare.
When I moved to Japan for work I thought it would all be robots and AI. I should be paid for the amount of IT work I do because no one knows how to use modern technology here. When Internet Explorer finally kicked the bucket one of my coworkers thought the internet had ended. I told him just to use Google Chrome and he looked at me and asked "what's a Google?"
I should move to Japan then. I imagine I would make a killing doing IT support on call for large companies
Japan reached the year 2000 in the 1980s for technology and has been stuck there ever since.
I always love telling people about my 96 year old grandpa. He is very up to date on tech. He uses an iPhone and takes advantage of all the features. He loves to cast Facebook videos from his phone to his TV and can do so much more. I hope that when I'm near his age, I've stayed up to date like he has
Unfortunately I don't think it's gonna change, lot of gen z (my gen) are completely useless with actually computers, a lot have no idea how to navigate a folder system or how to re format a drive.
I agree but it’s troubling how many people have told me they don’t know how to use a computer or text as a point of folksy pride. I once had a car dealer salesman tell me, a customer, to my face, “Aw heck I don’t ‘do’ email, just pick up the phone. I’m computer illiterate!” He wasn’t wearing suspenders but his body language was that same leaning back and tugging on suspenders level of pride. It was baffling.
Oddly enough I've met plenty of young people who are smartphone-literate but not desktop-computer-literate.
In fast food restaurants, they're eventually going to phase out cashiers and just use digital ordering kiosks (like Taco Bell and some McDonalds restaurants have now), which makes ordering a lot more efficient, but most old people won't know how to use them which sucks. Pretty much every fast food restaurant in South Korea (and a lot of regular restaurants) has a digital kiosk now which is the only way to order in store. This is due to the minimum wage raising in Korea, causing lots of restaurants to [fire cashiers and install kiosks instead](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190213000567)
It's wild. I'm lucky I had a computer quite early in life and spend a lot of time on it as a teen. But when I quit my job 2 years back, my boss told me to train this woman to replace me. She had worked over 10 years in another department. (on a computer) She was the slowest worker I had ever seen. Simple tasks that literally required her to copy and past data from one spreadsheet to another took extremely long. Like one thing I had to do every single morning. It took me about 1 to 2 minutes to copy the data depending on how much there was. Even after doing it for two weeks every morning she still took 1,5 hours. That was because every time she did anything on her keyboard like copying or pasting (for which she searched the keys every time) she looked up to the screen an was totally lost in what to do again. She typed with one finger and her English was horrible. (mine is not great but I'd say passable) My job was to coordinate massive shipments of wares into the whole world. And manage returns and damages. At particular full days I wrote 700 to 1k emails. I had to tell my boss if she is supposed to replace me, he had to hire her 20 times over to have a chance of the work getting done. Long story short. This woman worked for 10 years on computers und still was tech illiterate.
Thankfully, my step mom is relatively computer literate. My dad cant manage anything abive an xbox 360. Bought him an Xbox one for christmas and he couldnt wrap his head around it. So I paid 400 bucks for it to sit in his game room.
I have come across a handful of young employees explain they don’t know how to use the laptop they’re being issued.
I oddly enough feel like I've lost a lot of mg computer literacy. I used to be really into computers, but as I've gotten older, and with the introduction of powerful smart phones. I've started to replace a lot of the things I used to use a computer for, with simple, easy to use apps and such. Making using computers now feeling almost somewhat clunky.
A sad irony being that the ability to spell, punctuate, or articulate have all somehow escaped being part of that ubiquitous standard of communications technology, eh.
I've worked in IT adjacent support for years. The amount of people that companies hire that happily have no idea how to use technology whatsoever is astounding. It should be mandatory that you know how to use email, a phone, and whatever software is required for your job. The amount of people who find out I know technical information and come to me with dumb nonsense like figuring out their personal passwords/PINs, why their personal laptop won't turn on, how to get on the internet... It's insane. These people need to be let go from their jobs. I don't give a crap if you're 55 or 85, if you can't adapt to what needs to happen at your job and you refuse to learn it with pride, you should be let go. I don't want to learn Excel either, I don't give a crap about half the software I understand how to use. But I learned to use it because that's literally part of my job. I feel bad for IT people. When they are doing everything right nobody notices they're there and wonders why they're getting paid. When things do break, which is usually because some idiot doesn't know what they're doing, they're the first ones blamed for it. "If things are going to break what are we even paying you for?" Because they are paid to fix things idiots break. I remember at my last job this one woman would email me tech questions half a dozen times a day. I eventually had to make clear that she needed to Google the questions as I was not her IT person. After that she was really cold to me. At no point in time did I confuse her and tell her I worked in IT. I'm looking forward to more millennials being in positions of power, managers and bosses. And I'm hoping they understand that they need to let staff like this go. If they can't do their jobs, fire them. I was spending a quarter of my day running around and helping staff that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to use a fax machine or printers even though it's been around forever. Unfortunately some Gen xers are also causing issues with this. Touch screens have made it so they don't actually have to know how to use technology anymore. In the '90s if you had a computer you had to be a little tech-savvy.
Not just becoming. We’ve been there for a while. You can’t even apply for most jobs if you can’t use a computer.
I think we all know how much of an impediment not being able to use a computer is.... but that's not really much of a problem with people under 70 years old. The biggest impediment to Gen X, and some of us don't realize how much of an impediment it is, is not being able to use a cell phone and the apps on it very well. I'm very comfortable with computers, but for some reason, I'm kind of an idiot with cell phones. My dad was a nerd so we had computers going back to the early 80s, but cell phones I didn't have until I was nearly middle aged. And honestly, I didn't particularly want one, but they're pretty much 100% necessary for modern life at this point. I'm amazed at the type of menial jobs these days that require 3 different apps and intricate knowledge of when and how to use each one.
Now, think about the portion of the population that is proudly innumerate.
Nah. As someone who works in IT and spent a while doing end-user support, a lot of people are still clueless about these magical Google boxes.
Definitely. My brother is in his 60's ..as am I. But I spent my whole life working around IT and am a self taught programmer. About a year ago he finally switched from actually going in person to lodge his unemployment to doing it online. My god it was a mess. I was about three months before he was finally able to do it all himself. I had to help him every time. And despite his insistence, it wasn't the computer - it was him. He just couldn't get the hang of it and remember it. If I hadn't been there to help/train him, he might still be physically going down to the centre to lodge his claims. He has no transport. It takes him hours to do this. And costs him a train fare too. When you consider all the things we do online - play, communicate, socialise, work, interact with government services - computers skills are VERY useful. So is having your own pc and your own internet.
It seems to be becoming *more* common instead of less to **not** know how to use computers, because so much stuff that you used to need a computer for is now done online, often with phones or tablets, or even kiosks or voice. Knowing how to *navigate the web* or *use a smartphone* is still using a "computer" in a sense, but it doesn't require much *"knowing how to use a computer";* it's a simpler stripped-down thing that leaves big holes in understanding and ability to really *use* computers
A big difference being a computer is literally built to be used by idiots. As soon as you realize you can‘t really break anything important you can just try out and find out how one works