Ask Lemmy

The exception to your rule may be the boomers who grew up learning how to program without OOP or a modern IDE, who could manually correct an error in a punch card with sellotape and who could write a complete accounting system to run on a machine with 32K RAM and no hard disk. Now get off my lawn.

As a millennial that was born near the end of the cut off I think millennials will adapt well and likely better than most any other group except maybe Gen x.

We were brought up in the infancy of personal computer technology where everything was more difficult and convoluted than it is for preceding generations. We started out at minimum using DOS and having to circumvent the older operating systems where even the simple task of chatting with your friends online was a multi step process. Since that point things have really only gotten simpler.

If we were to create a meta person who has the general computer competence of their generation and tested them I think we would find that Gen x and millennials are not only as well adjusted to modern technology but also faster to adapt to it. They will likely be faster at solving issues and problems as the skills and knowledge they had to adopt early in life to do even simple things still applies to the basis of all computing that we have today. Even very simple things like file navigation, adjusting basic computer settings, setting up a computer, modifying files, and even using web searches to troubleshoot problems are strengths that millennials and Gen x will have that will likely see a fall off from there after in the other generations.

Computer incompetence has become increasingly more common over time to the point we are reaching now in the United States where it's fallen off so much is becoming a crisis as kids growing up now can simply only use phones and tablets and actual basic computer skills have become an issue. With the cheap cost of electronics there is even less interest in kids to learn how to solve issues on their devices as they see it as easier to just buy a new device altogether and avoid troubleshooting altogether.

Its dependant on how much of a jump in tech we can go. To me, the next jump is immersive AR, and/or realistic AR. That could be a hurdle for people not grown up with it.

I already am.

The most common complaint I hear on most websites is "I have been here on this website since the first days, and now they redesigned the site and I can't find the place to change my profile picture", so you can already see signs of this.

The reverse also applies too. I notice other Gen Z members often asking things like "how do I make a forum" when they clearly just made a forum thread (they're called threads, not forums) to ask the question. It's like the internet equivalent of "how do I get Green Mario", "why can't Metroid crawl", "why does Zelda always have to save the princess", and "what gives X-man his long nails".

Will they? They already are. The number of people I see who don't know what a file manager is is insane. It's insane because I remember before smartphones, everyone knew what a file manager was. They forgot? I don't know. It makes no sense to me.

I think in general, people are bad with technology.

Nah, this is iphone issues. They do everything as inconvenient as possible. AFAIK there still no way to transfer files over bluetooth for iphone.

It depends what we mean by "bad with technology."

A lot of posts here are talking about how the current young generations (Generation Z and Generation Alpha) are bad with technology as they don't understand anything, and this is true, but to most people being "good with technology" means you're good at using it for desired results, not necessarily understanding how things work or how to troubleshoot.

In my opinion: No. Due to the type of technology that the millennials grew up with, they are generally good at adapting to new and changing technologies, so I suspect they'll be quite good at keeping up. Whether this will hold true for Z and Alpha is to be seen.