Somewhat related, but not really: I hear that Gen Z (in general) are worse at tech support issues than the past couple generations. The theory is that Gen Z grew up with tech that, for the most part, “just works”. Troubleshooting issues isn’t as common, and isn’t as necessary of a skill.
especially with mobile phones now, look at iPhone for example, it’s so user friendly that if you try to do anything remotely advance you need to jump through hoops to do it. I had a sales person try to tell me that the iPhone was expandable because it had cloud storage capability, they didn’t know what a Micro SD card was and that it used to be able to go in all the flagship phones. Pretty disappointing
Mostly it’s that everything on phones/tablets/touch screens is an app. You don’t pick where to install it. You don’t need to look up save files.
Some of them are getting to college without ever needing to go through a file directory, so they don’t necessarily even have the basics to troubleshoot.
Same thing happened with cars: boomers used to troubleshoot a lot of car issues themselves, and then somewhere along the line cars got good enough that people stopped learning how to do their own maintenance and now most people don’t even change their own oil.
As technology matures, inevitably users stop worrying about self repair and just hire professionals to do it for them.
GenX will forever be the best “jack of all trades” in tech. Someone once said we “straddled the digital divide”, and that will never happen again. At least not until something as radical as the Industrial Revolution or Information Age comes around.
We had to figure shit out. No internet, nothing, make it happen or it don’t work, and you don’t get to play.
Gen Z frustrate the hell out of me sometimes. “Um, my laptop is doing something funny, I need a new one.”
Somewhat related, but not really: I hear that Gen Z (in general) are worse at tech support issues than the past couple generations. The theory is that Gen Z grew up with tech that, for the most part, “just works”. Troubleshooting issues isn’t as common, and isn’t as necessary of a skill.
especially with mobile phones now, look at iPhone for example, it’s so user friendly that if you try to do anything remotely advance you need to jump through hoops to do it. I had a sales person try to tell me that the iPhone was expandable because it had cloud storage capability, they didn’t know what a Micro SD card was and that it used to be able to go in all the flagship phones. Pretty disappointing
The iphone has always sacrificed user freedom to provide a streamlined experience a monkey could make work.
Mostly it’s that everything on phones/tablets/touch screens is an app. You don’t pick where to install it. You don’t need to look up save files.
Some of them are getting to college without ever needing to go through a file directory, so they don’t necessarily even have the basics to troubleshoot.
Same thing happened with cars: boomers used to troubleshoot a lot of car issues themselves, and then somewhere along the line cars got good enough that people stopped learning how to do their own maintenance and now most people don’t even change their own oil.
As technology matures, inevitably users stop worrying about self repair and just hire professionals to do it for them.
Honestly I feel like a dying breed among my middle-class millennial dad-friends.
I’m like the only person who changes their own oil. All the rest of them just drive electric cars.
To be fair that sounds like a good thing
I mean, modern applications don’t even give you an error more often than not.
GenX will forever be the best “jack of all trades” in tech. Someone once said we “straddled the digital divide”, and that will never happen again. At least not until something as radical as the Industrial Revolution or Information Age comes around.
We had to figure shit out. No internet, nothing, make it happen or it don’t work, and you don’t get to play.
Gen Z frustrate the hell out of me sometimes. “Um, my laptop is doing something funny, I need a new one.”