Ask Lemmy

I am late 30s. Grew up without cell phones, computers etc. Didnt hear about the internet before it was available at the nearby library.

However..

I study computer science. I love tech, gadgets etc.

My theory is though, at some point, my interest drops and i just stick with what i know. Just like i stopped caring about tv, popculture, fashion etc etc

You get other things to do, and less time for the fun stuff.

Technology is quickly becoming less and less about the underlying technologies and more about how the large corporations want you to use their product. I was briefly a volunteer website administrator for a small non-profit and despite having done freelance web development 15 years ago and knowing how to program HTML and several other web technologies, it was a struggle because they used Google on the backend and everything in Google was unintuitivly laid out and impossible to do without going through the Google interface. I often frustratingly joked that I was a Google administrator, not a web administrator.

Another example was some Linksys wireless mesh extenders I bought. The setup process involved using a privacy invasive app on your phone to connect with Bluetooth. It would try for 5 minutes and then just error with no error code. There is no manual setup process. There was no log file. When it didn't work after 5 minutes of trying, it told you to call a phone number that was always busy and blocked the 5 minute connection process since it needs a phone to do both things. Eventually, after about 6 hours, it just randomly started working.

Combine that with people biologicaly becoming less able and willing to learn as they get older and it's pretty likely that millennials will eventually get left behind even if they try to keep up to date.

I refuse to use tik tok - so, maybe?

I think the biggest variable in ability to learn is the willingness to learn. I think we will still annoy the youngin's of tomorrow a little bit, human nature is to avoid some change, but I dont think millennials will be as bad as boomers because of lead exposure.

Built my first PC at 8 years old, no degree, and my family is comfortable - which is really as far as my aspirations went career wise.

I think, because I feel it myself while studying for a specialization (getting bored in my current role), its that people grow apathetic to learning after a point, coupled with the pace of life... Who has the time, energy, and focus to keep up with every new facet of tech?

Its my passion, and still I have trouble.

Absolutely, and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be the fossil holding up the entire self-checkout lane because the retinal scan can't see past my cataracts, and not one of these kids can stop me!

I'll add my two cents as a Gen Z that realized he was way more tech illiterate than initially thought.

In my undergrad, I was tasked with running molecular simulation jobs on an HPC that I could only access through a terminal. The complete paradigm shift I experienced going from just a Windows user to Linux was shocking. Didn't realize how little I knew about file system hierarchies, connecting devices, and seemingly unheard of concepts like mounting and partitioning drives. I didn't know that Bash existed, what a shell even was, or literally anything with networks. Imagine going from using Word and thinking the terminal is terrifying to writing python scripts in Vim without really knowing how to program either.

Linux plus a de-Googled phone is where I've been at. After nuking Windows 11 from my laptop, I even saw that it got a decent amount faster. Using software that won't have its UI drastically changed every year is nice.

I'm already one of these millennial who become a boomer.

I'm for the regulation of social media with age restrictions or restricting access to smartphone for the youngest.

When I see the damage of both of them on the young generation and at school, we can't close our eyes on the issues. We need to act and fix them.

Not a chance. Millennials had to be good at tech when they were coming up. Everybody after got iOS.

It seems like most people at my highschool are familiar with their basic favorite apps and can get a not great grasp on new applications and programs. But other than that it seems like a lot of people seem hopeless because they might now how to use their favorite apps well, but the second anything errors out of bugs out or they install a new app that isn't so user friendly their brain just powers down. They don't even try to Google it.

This is one thing that kinda concerns me is they people stay in their little apple ecosystem and use the most basic apps they don't really get that experience of actually googling s error code or a specific bug. Even people who use their phones half the day still don't know shit about anything because they don't leave their bubble.

But I know it's not everyone's thing to try to step out of the bubble and learn how to troubleshoot and fix stuff. But there is so much cool stuff out there that they just refuse to learn because they didn't immediately understand the app. It's like they are scratching the ice with how much they can do with their devices and they don't even try to go deeper.

The vast majority will be, yes. We may have grown up with technology being janky but it has been years since that has been the case. People are comfortable with the current tech. Even me as a techie will often reach for the thing that I know how to use rather than going through the process of learning something new. I largely just want shit to work.

They'll be worse, as qe abstract computer code more and more, less people actually have any idea how they work.

As a milenial, we were taught how to sewrch for solutions and trying to figure stuff out.

Chances are millenials will deal with tech far better thqn gen z. We might stumble when shit is so dumbed down its not even intuitive, but hey, we can actually search for solutions and use more than two brain cells.

I don't think it'll be nearly as bad. Of course, younger generations will always be quicker than the last when it comes to new tech. I'm sure I'll be struggling with Timmy's fulldive VR system at some point

I mean I'm Gen Z and still don't understand what an NFT is so probably lol