800

I feel like the people I interact with irl don't even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.

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[-] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 339 points 1 month ago

The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less. The era of growing up with a home computer that required fiddling and dial up, etc is over. People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.

[-] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 103 points 1 month ago

And for that reason alone I built a Linux PC for my 11 year old and told him to go to town figuring things out. (I supervise everything of course). Dude has been doing fantastic so far.

[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 68 points 1 month ago

If he doesn't solve problems with chmod 777 then he's already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Who's going to win?

SELinux+Seccomp+Containers...
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.

Neither! It's whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago

Oh, but you gotta drop a chmod nuke at least once to feel the terror having done something irreversible. As a bonus, you’ll also gain a brand new appreciation for snapshots.

[-] lars@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 4 weeks ago

sudo chmod 000 / for security

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 weeks ago

And it’s also so much faster than full disk encryption. Cool little trick the admins don’t want you to know.

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[-] bigfondue@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Cool. I'm old enough that in middle school I begged my Mom to take to the mall to buy Linux. I got a Red Hat Linux CD-ROM pack from a store called Babbage's. I couldn't download the ISO on our modem and I don't remember if we even had a burner at that point.

[-] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

I used to love going to Babbage’s in the mall. So many King’s Quest boxes….

[-] Fetus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

King’s Quest

Damn, that's a good hit of nostalgia!

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[-] NikolaTeslasPigeon@lemmy.world 41 points 1 month ago

I grew up starting my computer use having to navigate DOS just before windows 3.11 was released. I work in tech today and I feel like just knowing about a lot of the automated things we take for granted today has given me a little bit of an edge.

[-] griff@lemmings.world 27 points 1 month ago

I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles, both ways uphill!

[-] expatriado@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago
[-] phonics@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago
[-] NikolaTeslasPigeon@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago
[-] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You mustn't have been paying attention, Lt Dan ain't got no legs, that doesn't preclude him from having feet

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[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 9 points 1 month ago

In DOS time I learned how to type quickle because I had to type in cd games cd keen keen as quickly as possible to minimise non-gaming time.

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[-] cryptTurtle@piefed.social 34 points 1 month ago

So a friend of mine went to a convention to show off his gaming project. The kids there were trying to touch the monitors to play the game. They didn't grab the keyboard and mouse. They didn't touch the controller. They touched the monitor. People's framework of what a computer is and what it's made of is completely different than what it use to be

[-] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago

Reminds me of my senior teaching days 15 years ago. Solitaire, same.exe and saddam.exe and whack.exe soon had those oldies clicking, double clicking and dragging.

Didn't think then that the situation could reverse.

Same still exists on Android and is still a brain twister.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kubilayerdogan.samegamel

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[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Hate to say it, but that technical literacy from having to operate computers the difficult way was a small blip in history. So things are just kind of going back to "normal."

Now, the only real natural entry into "computing" is gaming. Pretty much everything else has to come through formal education, which is largely myopic and boring.

Don't think I've even worked with a gen Z engineer yet. I assume they exist.

[-] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting... Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn't grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don't seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.

I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.

One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know. Saying I don't know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with "but I will find out" or "can you help/explain it". Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.

[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 month ago

is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know

This is just the majority of people, not specific to any generation. Our minds are predisposed to use inductive reasoning to explain the world around us. We see something new and our brain immediately begins to make inferences based on prior information we believe we know (I say it this way cause our memories are incredibly faulty) that we think is relevant or comparable.

It's essentially the Dunning Kruger effect: we think we know more than we do and, because of this, believe we can simply assume correctly about other things we know nothing about.

It's an incredibly bad habit that is supposed to be trained out of us through our education systems but we all know how incredibly faulty those systems are.

[-] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn't know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.

[-] lars@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 weeks ago

Hadn’t realized what a gem “I don’t know” is until waaaaay too late. Saying “I don’t know” still often feels like a personal, albeit public, moral failure. Which is so dumb. But feels like it makes so much sense.

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[-] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

You are absolutely right, but let's be clear here... it's not so much the lack of keyboard and mouse that's the problem... it's that these touchscreen devices don't let you actually DO anything. The devices you can use a keyboard and mouse on ALLOW you to play, customize, make mistakes, and learn. There's no reason a touchscreen device couldn't provide that too, but iOS and Android specifically forbid you from learning anything - that's a recipe for security holes! And THAT's the real skill they lack. Real competence means bending the endless possibilities to your will - not just being given 5 of the most common ones and being locked out of the rest.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less.

There's simply no evidence of this

What's more, the prevalence of cheap, accessible technologies is having a host of knock-on effects. Case in point:

People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.

Feels like I'm listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.

[-] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 month ago

I wouldn't say that data is definitive proof. The table is missing ages from 30-under 65 from the table (at least if you're not logged in, if there is a more complete table please share). Also not sure how good some of the questions are for determining tech literacy. Knowing that Elon Musk ran both Tesla and Twitter in April 2023 is more if you keep up with the news rather than knowing how to work a computer. Other ones are good like being able to identify 2FA or knowing what LLM/AI is capable of.

[-] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

My wife is a teacher. Kids come to school without the ability to use keyboard and mouse which was not the case in the 90s. I also only drive manual :P

[-] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago

Bullshit, I went to school in the 90s, and half my class had never seen a computer before. I'm surprised you don't remember how many kids struggled with Mavis Beacon.

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[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 points 1 month ago

Feels like I'm listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.

There have been some articles regarding beginning CS classes bring required to include teaching concepts like folder structures because a sizeable part of class was list on this concept.

To use your transmission analogy, it would be like truck driving schools now need to how to drive a manual transmission vehicle, which adds to the length of the class. Or all the company vehicles are manual and now the company has to deal with hiring new drivers who don't know how to drive stick but will say they know how to drive.

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[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

LMFAO, bruh, your categories are 18-29, and 65+.

Your Source literally entirely skips over the age group we're talking about. You're not proving strong literacy skills of any kind atm.

And writing skills are literally entirely different from understanding how a computer works and how to trouble shoot it. Can you name what activity Gen z is doing that's equivalent to texting that is teaching them how to trouble shoot computers that's different then the way millenials learned?

Because the whole point of that comic is that boomers learned to read and write using letters and books but look down at millenials when they read and write short messages to each other constantly, which is also practicing reading and writing. So what activity is Gen z doing that's learning how to trouble shoot things that millenials don't recognize as learning how to trouble shoot things?

(For the record I think the generation difference is wildly overblown in threads like this, but Im also not convinced that it's completely unreal, and I also think boomers still had somewhat of a point that that comic glosses over, and we're all now seeing it with our attention spans and vitriol).

[-] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Why there now exists "iPad Kid".

That a friend I know of has a lot of his kids entirely on smartphones, while their family PC is hidden behind cobwebs and dust; if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.

[-] EnsignWashout@startrek.website 29 points 1 month ago

if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.

In fairness, it can be expensive to stock the holy water necessary to fend off the demons that inhabit all printers.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago
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[-] FerretyFever0@fedia.io 11 points 1 month ago

I'm extremely young, I don't know how shit works, like at all. Because stuff works pretty well nowadays. Cannot imagine not knowing how to use a mouse. It could not be simpler imo. Can't remember a time that I didn't know lol

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 16 points 1 month ago

Don't underestimate yourself. Just by posting here you have proven that you're more proficient than the average Joe.

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[-] Bluewing@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago

You should spend some time trying to teach CAD to students in High School. My first couple of days with a new class involved teaching them that, No you can't use your finger, and then how to use a mouse.

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[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Imagine studying at uni for years to become a programmer, only to be replaced by a vibe coder with an iPhone.
But remember, hard work always pays off!

[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

We all imagine that, is has yet to happen. Vibe coders can produce the spaghetti code of upwards of 10 unpaid interns! What value!

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[-] Siegfried@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Wait, does that mean that we millennials are actually going to be remembered for something good ?^*

We better find a cool name... the golden generation of tech? The tech overlords?

^* obviously i think we are cool

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

And once again, Gen X is completely ignored

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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
800 points (100.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

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