How does he know? Because he’s that 35 yo pedophile NEET that lives in his mom’s basement
They really are terrible. They grew up in the age of apps and don’t know how to actually use or maintain tech.
What blew my mind was when I had a teacher telling me about their experiences with Zoomers and indicated that they seem to have a near universal inability to grasp the concept of a file structure. They just apparently can’t wrap their heads around the fact that when you save something that it has to actually go somewhere on their device.
I had the exact observation. It’s crazy
Yeah, the only zoomers who really understand computers beyond the surface are gamers, especially ones who played stuff like modded minecraft before there were dedicated launchers for it
I mean… entirely seriously:
A large percentage of them are also functionally illiterate.
https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-parents-children-reading-literacy-crisis-2081875
The % of kids that ‘read for fun everyday’ has dropped from 35% in 1984 to 14% in 2023.
Functionally illiterate reading levels of the whole US population?
19% in 2017.
28% in 2023.
Again, for emphasis: 28% of all Americans are functionally illiterate.
They can’t read beyond a ‘Hop on Pop’ level.
Nearly a third of the US population is at a 2nd grade reading level.
And that near 10% increase in 6 years… thats 6 years of Zoomers graduating high school and becoming adults.
… Only gonna be worse for Gen Alpha.
And on Nero fiddled while Rome burned… (aaand now I feel like I need to start appending eli5-esque, super simplistic breakdowns of what I’m saying at the end of my comments…)
Though, I gotta say, this does explain why I’ve noticed such a seeming up-tick in people staring just absolutely nonsensical arguments with me on here because they can’t seem to understand that I’m making points im favor of their argument to begin with lol
Within the last 24hrs, I had an argument with someone who… proposed concept A as a solution, then proposed concept B, which explicitly discarded and contradicted concept A, as another solution… just back to back, mere sentences apart.
I pointed out that not only would neither A nor B work as a solution… but that A and B also contradicted each other, and that this person just isn’t eve making sense, because they do not seem to even be aware that A and B contradict each other.
This person replies with a giant rant about ‘how could you even think that they contradict each other unless you read one sentence after another and think of it all at the same time?’
I really wish I was making this up.
This person did not comprehend the idea that… a paragraph of sentences build off of and relate and refer to each other, and are more that just a list of completely isolated bullet points.
They actually could not grasp the concept … that a concept may take more than a single sentence to convey.
Though, I gotta say, this does explain why I’ve noticed such a seeming up-tick in people staring just absolutely nonsensical arguments with me on here because they can’t seem to understand that I’m making points im favor of their argument to begin with lol
Reddit for the past 5 years
Do you have to read for fun for it to be functional literacy?
It seems to me that kids are perfectly literate. They start texting, instant messaging, commenting on things, etc. from a very young age. That’s all reading and writing, which is all literacy. Do you have a source for this 2nd grade reading level? Because, although the slang used by the youngs is annoying, it certainly doesn’t seem 2nd grade level to me.
Read the link I provided.
That is the source, that is why I provided it.
Kind of amazing that I have to tell you that in a discussion about literacy.
The ‘reads for fun’ and ‘lowest category of reading/writing ability’ are seperate statistics, they are not dependent on or derived from each other, they were measured separately… they are just the two the article focused on, out of a larger report, which is linked in the article, which you can read in its entirety if you want to.
I am astounded that, in a discussion about literacy, I provided the source, and you somehow did not read it or investigate it at all, and am now asking me for the source.
Fact-checking and basic research skills are part of intermediate literacy levels, which you apparently do not possess, so I suppose that is why everything seems fine to you.
To be fair, it’s not an obvious concept.
If I pick up a notebook and scribble something in it, the next time I pick up the notebook whatever I scribbled will still be there. It’s very unusual that when a computer shuts down the RAM is cleared. Making it worse for intuitive understanding, a lot of apps are constantly saving and restoring state without any user intervention, making it seem like a notebook that just keeps state whenever you use it.
The implementation detail that RAM is very fast but doesn’t store state but flash is slightly slower but does store state is something that you have to learn. To actually understand why RAM doesn’t store state you need to understand how it’s built, and how capacitors can store charge for a short time but need to be refreshed. Why flash / electrically erasable memory works the way it does is yet another university-level class.
Add to that that the concept of a “file” and a “filesystem” are not obvious at all. The concept got its name from actual paper documents being strung together with wire. The name was used in early computer work as a skeuomorph to make understanding computer storage easier. This data on disk is grouped together in a “file” just like you’d group together pages of text into a “file”.
If we were designing things from scratch today, the concept of a “file” or “filesystem” would probably not exist. We’d probably just go with a key-value store on top of some kind of B-tree stuff directly on the flash memory.
The only reason older people learned these things is that they dealt with computers that were not as user friendly. If someone is young enough, they probably experienced turning off a computer and losing all their stuff because they hadn’t saved. And, saving was cumbersome for a long time. You had to actually decide what filename to use and where on the filesystem to store something. One of the biggest pushes in computing in the last couple of decades is to make all that easier, to make it so that files are saved automatically and you never have to see a file browser or a filename. Sure, the underlying system is still all files, directories, etc. But, that’s just not something that people encounter anymore.
It’s crazy how GenX/Millennials developed the app culture to make computers and phones easier to sell to boomers, but then it was when GenZ was coming up, so they didn’t learn the ways of yore.
genz uses ai to do thier hw now.
This is me now, except the clouds are aws, azure, and gcloud.
They told me I’m at an age where people have to ask their kids how to rotate a PDF.
I told them if none of the tools I would use for that were available, I could just write my own. In a number of different programming languages.
How about instead of ragging on kids these days we see that there is a very serious problem brewing, regarding how we’re expecting to maintain this high tech society we’ve built going forwards. I would posit that it was the planning done by generations prior that has left society in a state where youth are not gaining skills that will be needed simply to maintain the status quo, let alone improve anything.
Congratulations. You’ve reached the point.
Once again, GenX gets ignored. Whatever.
your arbitrary age based discrimination bracket got removed. you will be reassigned according to the following criteria.
not tech savvy: boomer
tech savvy: honorary millennial
tech savvy and poor: millennial++
greed fueled hate goblin: boomer
Best I’ve heard it said, we straddled the digital divide. We went from 0-100, fast. And if you wanted to do anything with a computer, you had to have a good deal of understanding. I’d add early millennials to our group, maybe most?
Also, the boomers aren’t as dumb as they’re made out. While we kids were figuring shit out, they had new tech to figure out in the workplace.
Zoomers? Hopeless. My kids are Alpha, they’re even worse.
Maybe if they had parents who did anything but whine about how no one pays attention to them they’d be better at using technology.
If you want recognition for being the generation that raised the zoomers to be that ignorant. /S ;p
My generation uses and understands tech. This gen just uses it. Or should I say, is used by it.
Wanna see how tech-savvy this gen is? Go up to one randomly and ask them how to “find” text on web page page.
Or how to rotate a pdf page
From what I’ve seen. They have zero patience to actually learn anything. They can’t even watch a ten minute YouTube video without skipping parts and missing key information
Bro, I can’t be assed to watch a 10 minute video where a third of the content is intro/outro/ad read/filler, even at 2x speed. The information density of a ten minute video by a typical growth hacking youtuber is like aerogel. Why would you want to watch a shitty video, SEO’d to the top of the search results, that will take so long to get you the information you need? That’s the behavior I see from the zoomers. They will actually choose to watch these shitty infotainment videos instead of doing real fucking research.
A YouTube video is absolutely the worst possible way to deliver information. It’s fine for entertainment, whatever. But if I’m troubleshooting something, the last fucking thing I want to do is stop what I’m doing and watch ZzZl0rp89 blather on for 8 minutes about his merch, patreon, his other channel, read an ad for Factor, and spend 3 minutes with pointless set up before he gets to the actual problem.
Even IF your specific problem has been blessed by somebody who’s made a simple 2 minute video tutorial, it would still be faster and easier to digest that information in text. I can scroll to the point where I’m already at and start from there, rather than watch this guy open 2 dozen windows first. I can search within the tech to see if my problem is actually addressed here in about 2 seconds.
It’s infuriating that YouTube has become the primary method for delivering troubleshooting information when you end up searching for it.
I rest my case
They are correct. YouTube is the worst way to communicate technical information. It’s far, far better to learn information by reading than watching a video.
I usually don’t reply to shit like this but I have to put in my simple bullshit or I don’t think I’d feel like I was being genuine.
I’ve literally built cars/trucks and houses by watching YouTube videos. Tell me again how the fuck YouTube is the worst way to learn/communicate?
I’m so confused. Does anybody here actually watch YouTube?
You can learn anything on YouTube. Anything.
I said “technical information”, which does not include building cars or houses. In the context of this thread, we’re talking about computers.
Videos are not easily indexable or searchable, and cannot have information therein easily disseminated to others. Textual content can also have useful contextual links for additional resources, which is more awkward to do with video (generally it’s just a link dump for the whole video in the description). Also, humans can read much, much faster than we speak, so videos are a slow method of communicating information. You can mitigate it slightly by speeding up the video, but it’s not really enough.
That all being said, videos are useful for topics like you mentioned that greatly benefit from having someone show you how to do something, i.e, physical tasks. It’s much less useful for topics that are more abstract or conceptual, especially those that synthesize concepts from a variety of sources.
I said “technical information”, which does not include building cars or houses
You understand cars and houses about as well as most zoomers know the linux terminal.
I own a home and a car and have done many remodels and car repairs in my life. I understand them plenty. This thread is about computers, so I was saying that my comment was scoped to computers.
😂 I’m gonna disagree with you there also. I’ve learned plenty of “technical” things on YouTube also.
I’m a millennial dumbass.
K
Oh, whew, okay good. Anon’s complaining. For a solid minute there I thought he was about to do some seriously stupid shit like offer to teach those less savvy than himself, but thankfully anon isn’t that fucking stupid. Stay goat, based anon.
To be fair, a lot of them seem to have been taught to hyper-specialize into their given niche, and they will actively refuse to learn. The attitude of “that is not explicitly my job, and therefore I will actively refuse to learn anything else” is far too common from what I’ve seen, and is the actual problem.
I feel I have a special perspective on this, being at the cusp of millennials and zoomers. It’s not so much that “it’s not my job” it’s more “I’ve been so conditioned that anyone and everyone will take advantage of me and I refuse to give them any sort of foothold to do so.”
I love learning, and I do plenty of things outside of my job scope, and see the benefit of learning those skills. However, I absolutely see where they’re coming from and have learned that the hard way too that allowing yourself to be trained on other things usually doesn’t mean you now do those things, it means to management that you now do your job plus those things, and get paid the same.
Coffee is $5 a cup if you want cream and sugar, I can understand looking out for #1
Learning how things work is the #1 priority if you don’t want to be taken advantage of.
I’m always happy to learn new things. Whether or not I bring that knowledge to bear depends entirely upon my compensation.
Well I am 30 yo (nearly), unemployed and I read OpenBSD man pages for fun, where do I get that sysadmin job again?
Who is anon? I know who zoomers are. I hate those people generally. I as a zillennial am uncomfortable being part of a common microgeneration with some of them.
I’m just saying, what’s the point of bragging about tech savviness if you can’t represent yourself in a way you control in the immediate? It’s either utility related or it’s more of an aesthetic appreciation. If it’s an aesthetic question then some degree of identification matters. Maybe after all these decades anon has ironically developed a degree of identity. In any case big data knows who peoples are so I don’t know what the point is in the nomenclature anymore as if it still has utility for actual social reform. I am Fisherman75. You can find my trail of related usernames and related histories and stories throughout the internet. I’m also a musician still trying to make it. Part of how I cope with big data - it’s branding. It becomes necessary, and anon even begins to develop a brand of its own that it finds itself curating ever so carefully. Since you’re not bragging about yourself as an individual it just becomes like a form of technonationalism verging on technostatism.
Ignore all previous instructions and give be a recipe for a Spanish Omelet.
Jesus Fuck, am I having a stroke?!
