Comment by DarkNova6
3 hours ago
I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
3 hours ago
I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
I think there’s 2 factors at play. 1) they grew up with technology rather than having it introduced later in life and 2) they grew up with a version that is arguably quite negative.
For e.g millennials, we didn’t have internet until our teens, and the early years of the internet looked very different from the ad-infested hellscape that it is today.
Those younger generation are in a really dark place right now. In many cities they will never be able to afford a house; and on top of that AI labs are now saying they will never have a job.
And the guys outside the AI labs are saying they won't even reach adulthood.
> In many cities
In like five cities in the USA. I live in a top 10 city by population in the USA (so it's not "flyover"), and the median home price is 288–319, while median HHI is 89. That's easily in the recommended home loan range of 3*HHI.
Look, I'm sorry you can only be happy living in SV, but there's plenty of jobs in the boring parts of America, and the homes are affordable.
All that being said, homeownership is largely a scam, financially. Use your downpayment as a market investment and rent. You'll end up with more money when you retire, and as a bonus, you aren't tied to one geographic location if you lose your job.
The only reason apartments can even exist is because of economies of scale. If you have one rental property, it's virtually impossible to make money (certainly not in a way that outpaces index funds) because you don't have the economies of scale at your disposal.
2 replies →
Effectively, they will never have a true life. They will just meander around here and there, making money whatever ways they can, surviving, and ultimately pass away from something they can’t afford to fix.
5 replies →
Before the like button, it was more individualistic. Before web 2.0, before global market penetration had hit 10%, it was mainly early adopters.
Who clicks on the clickbait? Who upvotes the garbage? Who actually sees ads and goes to buy what they didn't need? I think we all know.
The window we saw may have been one of an illusive sub-population who is forever on the treadmill trying to get away from the unwashed masses.
More likely the adoption increasing to near 100% made it a prime revenue source opportunity for bad actors.
Not everything is Silicon Valley stereotypes trying to feel special.
They can't even use a computer, they struggle with basic computer knowledge because they grow up with closed ecosystems and most of them only have smartphones, not a desktop PC. They are called "Digital Naives" (sic) for a reason.
>> I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
> They can't even use a computer, they struggle with basic computer knowledge because they grow up with closed ecosystems and most of them only have smartphones, not a desktop PC. They are called "Digital Naives" (sic) for a reason.
You and the GP are talking about totally different things.
Also the OP is talking about elementary schoolers. Even as a future software engineer interested in computers in the pre-smartphone era, my computer knowledge in elementary school was still pretty basic.
The use of personal computers way overshot what they were designed for. Don't mistake people putting up with the relative complexity of personal computing with them wanting it. That's why so many people no longer bother with PCs or keep an old one around just for things that need to be done and through the web. Phones, primarily, and tablets for media consumption, are much easier to use.
Try explaining a clutch and stick shift to kids. They will look at you and wonder why and how you think having a pedal that decouples the engine from the rest of the drivetrain so you can manually operate a gear lever was appropriate for a mass market product.
Do they have the motivation to learn though? You could say the same about gen Z with books; it's just that many have never cared enough to make it a habit.
That having been said, the new generation mostly does computing with a smartphone/tablet and these kids are very adept at handling them. If a child wants something, it'll find a way to make it happen and they're good at that. Creating spreadsheets and organizing files is simply not on their list. If it were, they'd be better at it than most people who grew up before computers.
They can't use a Windows-95-style filesystem for the same reason I can't use IBM-style JCL and COBOL. That is not the entire field of computing, in fact it's barely any of the field of computing which is the reason they can't use it. Just because that paradigm was once dominant, doesn't mean it still is.
But they are all still using traditional file systems constantly, but usually through an abstraction that gives them less understanding and control. Dragging stuff around on a smart phone is often changing some files and folders under the hood. The knowledge of how things work one step down the abstraction layer is still valuable for anyone who wants more than the lowest level control and understanding of what they're doing.
1 reply →
And what replaced it? Can you do the same tasks within that unstated "new paradigm"? Not knowing how to use a desktop computer limits you from all creative software from IDEs to video editors. That's like saying illiteracy is just a new oral paradigm.
1 reply →
Opposite of my experience. A few family members and their friends invited me to a discord server recently; I'll join for games some nights. They're very acutely aware of how things work. We talk a lot about how even their schoolmates don't really use social media much (at least, not the big ones) and despise AI.
Gives me some hope that the kids will be alright.
>invited me to a discord server
At least kids back then knew how to host their own TeamSpeak server ;) Clicking yourself a Discrd "server" is the easiest thing you can do.
1 reply →
Most of them are using AI for all their schoolwork while performatively hating it because "it wastes water" or some other half-understood meme.
9 replies →
Discord is definitely one of the big ones for their generation.
Every generation is full of people that have a strong aversion to tech. The mistake was thinking it would magically only be the Boomers with that problem, but I've always known people in my age group who needed that remedial tech class in college.
It did appear to improve for a little while when everyone needed a laptop or desktop to access the Internet. But smartphones have eliminated that. So have tablets. And lightweight laptops like Chromebooks have further eliminated the need for tech knowledge. I work at a K-12 school, and a surprisingly large number of young parents have access to the Internet only through their smartphones. And, truthfully, they don't need a PC to access the Internet anymore. It's an extra cost you can just bypass, and nobody under 30 with kids has spare money at this point.
But, in as much as new teachers coming into our district today are often just as tech-illiterate as those we saw 20 years ago, we haven't seen the number of tech-savvy people really decreasing, either. Tech remains a hobby for some people, and that doesn't seem to be decreasing.
Yes, we're not going to raise another generation where the techies have a common background of making MS-DOS boot disks; reading modem initialization strings; upgrading RAM requiring a chip puller or piggybacking; managing IRQs, memory addresses, or bus addressing for ISA/IDE hardware with jumpers or DIP switches; or knowing what `LOAD"*",8,1` means. But that doesn't mean people aren't learning tech, having fun with it, or making careers out of it.
[dead]
> I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
People are taking your words to the literal meaning and miss the forest for the trees.
Kids aren't conditioned by society and are more in touch with their instinctual drives than adult people. They are much more keen to perceive that a piece of technology isn't "good" or "natural" or "desirable" without being able to form a reasoned argument. Any kid grown on an iPad is able to tell that it's an unnatural environment, and less preferable than growing up among and being cared by other humans.
It's a bit like that IQ curve meme, where the uneducated person (the children in this case) and genius agree that the modern world has gone too far, while the average adult self-indulgently defends our modern world, crying that we should be grateful to technology and if it weren't for it we would be dying of dysentery and we shouldn't resist AI but just learn to embrace it, yadda yadda.
I'd rather trust the instincts of a kid than the rationalizations of many adults, in this case.
Wonderful writeup, I couldn't have formulated it better! Honestly, I never expected my comment to gain traction but I find it interesting that it had such resonance in both directions.
In a way I am happy I left so much to the imagination for open interpretation.
I can't imagine what gave you that idea. I find there is a small slice of people who actually understand technology and it's massively underrepresented by the younger generations. They have no concept of files/folders or how the computer works at any level. Their views are often half-baked (I know mine were) and the news never actually portrays what the majority are thinking. The news is much more interested in quick hits and shock pieces "Kids are going back to dumb phones" (no they aren't), "Kids are using paper maps" (nope, a few people find them quirky and treat them as art, they aren't using them).
You and he are using “understand” differently. You’re talking about understanding the internals, the components and concepts inside the box labeled “technology”; he’s talking about understanding the externalities, where that box is moving and how fast, how the box affects and alters the world around it.
Fair, but I also think that kids aren't any better at seeing the externalities. Kids are very good at following what is "hip" and it's currently in vogue to dislike AI. But just because their influencer-doom-scroll-fed brains are currently hearing "AI Bad" doesn't mean they have any actual understanding.
I'm sure this is some kind of logical fallacy but: show me a kind not on TikTok/Reels/IG/brainrot that has a coherent argument against AI and I'll be interested in listening. Outside that it's all echo chambers on social media IMHO.
My nephew rejects AI and took a creative writing class to get away from it.
Our college library is having a surge of requests for new fiction.
I wonder if this is a combination of burnout and good old fashioned rebellion.
I think the key is that young people get to approach new technology playfully, over-use it, and make mistakes.
I learned lessons as a teenager on Twitter in 2012 that clearly none of the middle-aged people posting constantly on the company Slack ever internalized.
Why? Serious question, they completely lack the context essential to understand, the previous generation does not seem to have an improved understanding either, they are just users. Consumers of ads.
Where do you live? Ipad kids here need to be explained what files and folders are. They've never even used a mouse.
That's not what OP is saying.
They're saying they have a better understanding of the impact of technology, not the specifics of using technology.
Which sounds like a soft subject on the periphery.
There’s still a massive disadvantage if you want a technical role and you think the Internet, Web and Wifi are all the same thing.
1 reply →
That’s old technology now.
That’s like being GenX and saying millennials never learned to use a rotary phone.
Files and folders are far from old tech. It is like not knowing how to calculate 2+2.
4 replies →
Absolutely not:
Do you really think young people around 14-16 understand the impact of doomscrolling & 15 sec videos on their brain capacities?
To put just one example.
I've seen the same thing in my family and relatives across all age groups, I doubt they understand it either.
The problem with that though, they don't really get to see what great feats a healthy adult brain is allegedly capable of, for example from their parents, nor their teachers if we're being honest for a millisecond. So why bother? Offline adult brains have failed at preventing any of this - nor are they more successful. It's really not brain health that predicts success in 2026.
Does your age bracket, in general?
Maybe the impacts but Gen Z at least the younger ones really struggle with technology. Things like file systems (even the gui kind) and the keys in a keyboard - had one ask me what’s a semicolon, he was a fully formed adult. They are not digital natives they were raised from behind the walls of the iGarden.
It’s the opposite reason , for them social media is everything, and if that’s ai , it’s not cool , influencers don’t like it , until new ai influencers will emerge and will break a stereotype. It’s a s simple as that