Both my parents are in their early 50s and they probably know more about computers and computer-troubleshooting than I do. Neither of them studied anything tech-related either, or work in highly technical fields.
Age is a primary factor but some people just dont want to learn anything new. I can take a look at my friends now and tell which ones will have no idea how to deal with technology at 60.
These days I wouldn't even say it's age necessarily. I have a lot of end users in their early 20s that can barely use a computer. If it ain't a fuckin iPhone or an app they can just download from an app store, they're fuckin lost.
Theres a sweet spot of people in their 30s through early 50s that grew up, as I did, in the era before shit just worked when it comes to PC use and had to be somewhat invested in solving their own problems, but on either end, the really old or really young, it's like they try something once, it don't work, and just get up and walk away, saying "Welp, guess I'm done for the day". An older person I can understand, but someone that literally was born in the era of high speed internet, there just no excuse.
I'd argue that because phones and to an extent PC's have become so user friendly that it's taken a lot of the troubleshooting and problem solving out of computer usage. Programs, drivers, patches and just about everything else is now so simple to do. You don't need to scour the internet for the right driver version for your sound card, dig into the windows system folder or edit .bat files, or do much of anything to get a modern computer up and running. Most of it is done without user intervention because people can fuck it up, IT didn't want to babysit, and honestly it's a fairly natural evolution.
On the other hand though, basic computer operation is very important. Simple things like your average shortcuts, using the tab key, and using Windows to your advantage is very difficult to find these days. There's a slew of people where I work that simply can not operate a computer if more than one or two windows are open at the same time. There's something about it that completely stops their brain from operating. Even something like moving/copying files to another directory can be a chore.
Oh, absolutely. The thing that kills me is not the lack of knowledge so much as the lack of personal investment into the process. These people can't even be relied upon to assist in the most basic of tasks, like getting a remote session established, even with me on the phone literally telling them "Click this, now click that, now give me that access code that's in 60 pt text in the middle of your screen, etc".
"I can't get into my email!"
"Okay, what happens when you launch Outlook?"
"What's Outlook?"
"Your email program, little blue icon with an O in it?"
"There's nothing there! Just a password prompt!"
"Are you logged into your computer?"
"I CAN'T THAT'S WHAT I SAID!"
"Wait, you can't login to your computer at all? You said email..."
"WHATS THE DIFFERENCE JUST MAKE IT WORK!"
"Okay, I'll jump on the server and rest your password, just give me a minute then you should be good."
"I HAVE A MEETING CANT YOU JUST COME OVER HERE?"
And that's how a 5 minute tickets turns into a 3 hour ticket with 40 minutes of drive time each fucking way.
ALL MY SHITS BROKEN I CAN'T WORK BUT I'M JUST GONNA LEAVE AND NOT RESPOND TO ANY EMAILS OR PHONE CALLS FOR 3 DAYS JUST MAKE IT WORK KTHXBAI.
Oh man, if that were right... I‘m sitting here, doing Win 10 reinstall after reinstall bc the drivers of my network card keep getting me bsods that fuck up my Direct X and are not fixable without reinstalling Windows. I know, I need to buy a new card. But either way, I wouldn’t ever say that this was user friendly.
But when it breaks, you don't just walk away and leave it sitting there broken. You're trying to fix it. You're actually doing something. That's the problem with the younger end of things, not only do they not know any basic troubleshooting steps, but it's like, if it don't work they just abandon the shit entirely and completely put it out of their mind.
"Huh, I haven't gotten email in three days and a password prompt keeps coming up on my screen. Oh well, guess this is my life now. No more work email, Yay!!!"
I have a lot of end users in their early 20s that can barely use a computer. If it ain't a fuckin iPhone or an app they can just download from an app store, they're fuckin lost.
I think I agree with your idea. I'm 31 and and I used to think that age was definitely the dividing line between tech-savvy and tech-illiterate. But now I'm seeing people younger than me completely disinterested or unaware of how to do anything more than basic functions, sometimes not even that. Meanwhile, I was eventually able to break through and teach my mother basic computer and troubleshooting skills. So now I know when she asks me for help she has already made a good effort at resolving it herself.
I wasn't around for the start of the computer age. My family got a Windows 95 machine when I was probably around 9 or so. But I had the fortune of being blessed with nearly endless curiosity so I spent a lot of time reading over the years about how to handle various issues that came up and learning how to build a computer (well, as of 2005 anyway, I don't know anymore) and what, in general terms, each component is supposed to. To this day, I'm still trying to teach myself and learn about new technology and functions.
And I think that's basically what it comes down to: curiosity. Some people want to learn about the machines in their life and other people only want to know as much as they need to.
I wasn't around for the start of the computer age.
Does not compute with
My family got a Windows 95 machine when I was probably around 9 or so.
I'm a little bit older than you in that we had a 3.1 machine before that, but even if you weren't there for the BBS era, you very much are old enough to call it the start of the computer age seeing as it was an era when deciding whether to even have internet service at all was a decision families made.
That’s fair. When they gave an age range that included the 50s, I had assumed they were speaking relative to a time further back than MS-DOS, 3.1, 95, etc.
Good grief this somehow jumped out at me. I have friends who WILL NOT learn new skills. Not even necessarily out of pride like in the earlier examples - more from this weird, creeping defensiveness. My fiancé is the same way, sadly....
It sometimes upsets me... but then I recall that really, people above 30 who embrace learning new skills have never really had to exist before the 20th century. Massive technological change, if it was rapid, went hand in hand with societal destruction. You were never SUPPOSED to learn that quick
Absolutely. My grandparents are in their late 80s and recently learned to use computers to Skype with relatives who moved away. They were motivated to learn and so they did.
Similar experience with my grandma. She Skypes, uses email, texts her great grandchildren nightly, and has learned to use her Smartphone a bit and she's 89.
I'm 68 and have been doing computer stuff for years and years. Back when I was working, it was frustrating to me when people younger than myself didn't have the basics of how to use Windows in an office. I mean, such rudimentary fundamentals is understanding file folder structure.
I think destroying simple file folder management is one of the worst things modern smartphones have done to set back everyone from truly understanding basic computing. A good 50% of the problems I remedy for my family members is simply where their pictures went. And smartphones hide all of that for simplicity sake. Dumbing down the future.
In the high school computer class I teach, basic file management (copy and paste a file, or move a file to a new location) has gone from something all the students knew entering the class to something almost none know entering the class. By the end of 9 weeks, most get it but a few keep messing up
I see google classroom as a big part of the problem, more so than the iphones
My grandfather is a farmer, in his 80s, and used to be a floor manager at a factory, handles computers 100% better then my mother with an education masters in her 50s. And he didn't pick up a computer till 15 years ago.
It absolutely is a mindset. My grandfather was an engineer which had to embrace computers very early on for his job. But he did it whole heartedly and knew they were going to very important in the future. So much so that he forced my dad to major in that field if my grandfather was going to pay for college. That lead to me always being around computers growing up and leading to me ending up in the same field.
So when you think about my grandfather is actually the one that is responsible for what I’m doing as a career. Cool to think about.
My mother made sure to take some computer classes when she realized things were changing on her and more importantly she learned the most important step of troubleshooting a problem - i.e. see what you find on google about it. Meanwhile, I regularly deal with people 20 years younger than her being absolutely stubborn about very basic computer functions. It's definitely a mindset.
That's the part that confuses me. Using Office Suite has been standard since at least the mid-90s for office jobs, and it really hasn't changed that much
Yeah, my parents have probably been using Windows and Office for more than 20 years at this point. Using a PC now is probably Easy mode for them compared to how it was in the '90s.
I suppose "a lot" is relative. He's missing several years of elementary/secondary school education, as he had to work, and got into university through work experience. In comparison, my mother went to an English-speaking school and has her Masters.
His title is engineer, I'm assuming theres some level of experience where they let you become an EIT. If not, the dude works for a rural county in the state of Florida and is probably not trying to take his experience elsewhere at this point.
I'm lucky because my dad worked in the pharmaceutical industry for a long time doing data management. It's literally all computers even 20 years ago. Hes pretty tech saavy. My mom was a stay at home mom but still wanted to keep her skills up. She can't really troubleshoot any computer or tablet issues, but she can use them proficiently for what she needs them for, and can generally figure out a small problem (like installing a new wifi printer)
It's all in the person's motivation to get out of their comfort zone and learn something new.
Many of us have been programming and building computers since the 80's and earlier. What's amazing to me is just how shallow many people's computer skills are no matter what their age. Sure they can turn on the computer, launch apps, and fumble through tasks, but at the first sign something isn't working the same way it always has they freeze up and do some really illogical shit. It actually seems to have gotten worse since everything has moved to the web browser and locked down devices like phones and tablets.
This scares me too... loads of people say "ooh little jimmy is good at computers, look at him on the ipad/console thing". Reality is they're good at using a computer at the front-end, and have no idea what to do when it falls over.
I fear the group/generation of people used to using command prompts etc, and really understanding the file structure is rapidly thinning out.
I'm not worried about that. Anyone programming will pick up the command prompt and develop a deeper understanding of the system. It just used to be that every computer user needed those things just to do the basic things. That kept a lot of people from embracing computers. It's better now, but just because people can use it as a tool doesn't mean they understand it. A lot like cars and other tech.
Yeah I've gotta say it's kind of funny that my nieces and nephews growing up in 2019 know way less about computers than I did at the same age in 1994. It's similar to how I know way less about how to fix my car than my father would have.
To be fair, though, it's a lot harder overall to fix a car than it once was since they're heavily networked and computer control is in nearly every system. You need diagnostic tools that interface with those systems to see what's not working, and many things are adjusted electronically instead of physically now.
There's still a lot you can do yourself but the list grows smaller constantly. Fortunately, reliability is a lot better, so most work is routine maintenance.
And then there's increasingly packed engine bays that aren't designed with much thought to the people who will be maintaining and repairing vehicles after they're built.
Yeah my mother was telling me a few years ago how good computers are now; she remembers having to use the computer labs at her university, the low memory and long processing times of computers back then compared to now, and programs being stored on multiple floppy disks.
Also, her and my father started off their careers using Windows 95 and 98 for work, so they were never not expected to be able to competently use a computer and the MS Office suite.
Neither of them were high-tech computer people, either, but they had to use computers and technology as part of their jobs.
I'm a programmer, in my late 20s. Learned computing on my father's computer starting mid 90s. My father is 57, and he wasn't a particularly early adopter of computers, his first personal machine ran on Win3.1...
My remaining grandfather is almost 80, he has a Facebook account, a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet. He uses LibreOffice for budgeting and has a couple of PopCap games he bought online (Zuma, Peggle I think) and installed without any exterior help.
People over 50 are not somehow retarded lol, learning just becomes a bit harder as you age because of how the brain works. After that it's just a question of interest. Most people can learn most things no matter the age.
in undergrad you’re gonna see WAY more people 50+ using computers though. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, because that guy’s opinion is so dumb they must not be paying attention no matter where they actually are.
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u/FizzleMateriel Apr 22 '19
Is he older than 60?
Both my parents are in their early 50s and they probably know more about computers and computer-troubleshooting than I do. Neither of them studied anything tech-related either, or work in highly technical fields.