this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Every Reddit and Twitter user over the last few months: "OMG The Fediverse is so hard and complicated how can people figure this out?!?!?!!!!11eleven"
My brother(s) in data: It takes like 5 minutes to understand how it works and you're good to go (maybe 10 if you were the paint-chip-or-glue-eating-type back in school.)
I feel like yall are also overestimating the tech comprehension of a lot of the younger generation. Every action has been so simplified some young teenagers are as tech illiterate as some of their grandparents. If its not inmediately obvious or requires a workaround, they just give up.
Yeah, especially when you imagine that they are accustomed to not having to seek out knowledge or even entertainment. When algorithms feed you everything and your attention becomes a commodity you don't need to develop the skill to actually find it, or the wherewithal to even imagine that you need to go out and find it.
I believe those of us who were online in the 1995-2010 era remember what it was like to have an internet full of possibilities that you could explore and discover, but that was the exception.
I hate to be the guy to say it, but its a genuine lack of curiosity about "how things work."
I disagree, I have a 9 yr old son and he's all about how everything works. I think the problem is that it's too easy, for most of his questions it takes literally a minute to find a youtube video that explains nearly any concept. I certainly don't mean to belittle that but he'll have some question like "how can a cluster of satellites observe the entire planet" and he can have that question answered in seconds, and be force-fed ten more youtube videos on more of the same.
When I was his age (would have been 1989) that'd be a very difficult question for me to answer. Even though that problem had been solved for hundreds of years, I'd have probably needed to start with an encyclopedia and try to find enough about orbits to dig more. My dad knew a bit about space, maybe he'd have been able to point me in the right direction, but there was never an easy video to answer that.
There's an ability to access knowledge like there never has been before, the breadth and depth of knowledge on the internet is something we could only have dreamed of 30 years ago. The dream was that this equitable access to information would create a more informed and more inquisitive society, but somehow it's just made us lazy.
I'd like to see my kid realize there's not an easy youtube answer and actually go do more digging and synthesize an answer. I think he's well-placed to develop that skill but it's not something most people posess.
I think the problem that comes with that is overstimulation and a lack of boredom. In my experience kids (and perhaps adults as well) learn best if they have to learn in their own speed. Having everything spoon fed to you, especially when it’s an overwhelming amount of information, can get too much and people shut down.
Maybe it’s conspiracy theory territory, but I sincerely believe that the combination of overstimulation, decision fatigue and FOMO by the thousands of entertainment and information sources really doesn’t work well with human brains. I don’t think that people have become more lazy, it’s a form of mental overload.
That's very true too. I like the way Matthew Crawford talks about the Attention Economy and how we're essentially selling our attention to websites in return for "free" content.
I also think there's a real difference between actively sourcing information and mindlessly consuming it. Going to Netflix to specifically watch Black Mirror or Orange is the New Black is substantively different from opening Netflix and letting the algorithm suck away a few hours of your evening. Youtube tutorials are amazing and I've used them for all kinds of home, work and personal projects but it's also very easy to watch a bunch and feel like you know how to do something. I expect watching a really satisfying video of someone hand-cutting a dovetail joint between two pieces of wood releases a good chunk of the dopamine of actually doing it yourself, but it's not the same... not at all.
I don't think you necessarily disagree as much as not seeing your own child as the outlier they are. When you surround yourself with others who are willing to do bare minimum amounts of research to find an answer, it's easier to act like it isn't a problem.
Yet, I live in a country where massive amounts of people are rejecting things that are insanely simply to research and to prove like the efficacy of vaccines, for instance, or whether Donald Trump is a grifting buffoon. These people have no interest whatsoever in doing research that will undermine what they've already chosen to believe.
The sad reality is that if there are simple answers in front of them, most people won't look for harder ones. I simply think your child is an outlier in being willing to do any amount of research on things they are interested in. For many people it's incredibly hard to get them to even consider doing such a thing.
I think you're also basing your opinion on your limited world view. Morons have been anti vaccine since they were invented that's absolutely not even remotely new. Honestly most of your complaints can been seen throughout history in various forms because it's all just human stuff. I would caution you to try to avoid this thinking if possible because, frankly, it's some boomer shit. You picking up a sense of superiority and dunking on "kids these days" is just following the same pattern of every generation before you with slightly updated complaints.
I'd love to see humanity as a whole grow out of it and realize that the "kids these days" are just inexperienced people navigating the world exactly like we did. They have similar AND different challenges that they're reacting to. Many of them behave exactly like you would if you were born in the same gen.
Remember going to the library and trying to find things in encyclopedias lmao
Because all they're growing up with is dumbed down corporate black boxes of tech devices, along with a narrative that it's wrong and evil to build, fix, copy, and be curious
Literally just referenced this elsewhere to make the exact same point.
Corporations make things easy so when you have to learn how to do it on your own, you'll see that the cost of time/money/effort as too great and go back to the simple, effective, easy, low-cost corporate solution.
In many ways, it's not really their fault, it's driven by corporate control. Of course, it would be nice if they could break free and see that learning how things work is a useful means to an end (fuck, it's why I know how to sew and have clothes that have lasted over a decade), but you can't win over everybody.
Some?? In my experience ALL.
The older generation grew up in the time that you had "to get it" on some level to do anything.
The current gen ((my) kids 12,15) just don't use it the moment it doesn't work. Zero effort, zero will to learn. Because there's always another option which does work instantly. Fuck privacy, fuck my rights.
Hey I was born in 2001 and use both Mastodon and Lemmy. Stop with the juvenoia.
The fact is most people of any age don't care how things work and don't like putting in any extra effort into tech. Imo old people are sometimes worse with this.
People who want to understand how technology works are a minority, and those who actually do understand are an even smaller minority. Nobody can understand how everything they use works to a reasonable level of detail anyway. You either have surface level details of lots of stuff, or more detail about some specific things. Modern systems are just too large and complex to completly fit in a human brain.
Edit: When the comment I was replying to was first written it didn't include the age of the people they were talking about. Now that I know those it sounds less like a generation issue and more like the behaviour if children and teenagers. I think the person I am replying to needs to understand the difference between generations vs just still being a kid. Although personally I got into the technical side of things as a teenager.
100% this. We were paranoid that facebook would melt our kid's brain, but in reality it's messing up our parents' generation.
My 9 yr old is conflicted because all his friends are on Messenger Kids and he wants to talk to them, but doesn't want to give facebook access to his data.
You pretty much need a parent or some other reference person (which can be people in the internet) to teach you that, though. The chance of that having happened is a bit higher the more mature you are, just because you had more time to also figure out the other important things of life.
I think it's only a small difference though, because the unwillingness to learn new things also increases with age. I think the highest chance for someone to want to know how things work is around 25-35 or something. However, as you say, people of all ages generally don't care how things work, and all ages have people that do care how things work, it just depends on the person.
But probabilities are still a thing and I think it's a bit more likely for teenagers to not care to understand how something works.
They didn't specify the ages when I first replied. Now that they have specified they are kids I think it's even less of a generation issue and more of a teenager or child vs adult issue that's being wrongly framed as a generation issue.
Yeah I think they just used "zoomers" and "very young people" interchangeably.
No offense but I feel like as a parent theres a lot you could have done and can still do to mitigate that. Like, it's reasonable to be mad at the exploitative reasons for tech being the way it is but you're the parent and you've had a lot of control over those things for their entire lives. Not to mention that we're the generation that embraced the easier tech as a whole. Kinda wild to blame the kids that are literally products of us and our actions.
I come across this a fair bit. What it seems to be, is a complete lack of critical thinking.
Once an end user hits any type of wall, they just freak out and ask the helpdesk.
You can really tell who uses technology, and who grew up with technology. There does seem to be a broadening gap.
I don't think they're tech-illiterate in general; there are certain things they don't understand because they've never really had to - filesystems, for instance - but that's no different from most Millennials not understanding CLIs.
I honestly think this talking point is so dumb anyway. The whole concept of generations is actually stupid. They're just younger people dealing with their own flavor of the bullshit we all had to deal with. Their lives wouldn't magically be enhanced if they were latchkey kids that struggled to install a hard drive without the internet. I thought we wanted them to have better and easier lives? Isn't that the whole point? Why would we want them to struggle with our bullshit AND all the new stuff in the world that they're dealing with now? Plop them in one semester of a beginner computer/programming course and they'll know as much (if not more) as the average millennial it's not that deep.
It's wild that every generation gets dunked on by the ones that came before and so many people still grow up and repeat the cycle. Why? Just be kind to your kids and educate them if you think they're lacking important knowledge ffs. I'm especially disappointed in millennial parents doing this shit. We're still getting blamed for idiotic things to this day and you all didn't even hesitate to pull the same bullshit on your kids. Do better.
I've seen that a lot at work. If there isn't a YouTube video going over what they need to do, they are lost. They seem to get scared at basic debugging of output.
Yeah, everything has to be a visual aid, when it's easier to just read one page of instructions.
Back in MY day my shiny new gadgets had about a 50% chance to work out of the box without tinkering! Plug and play? Pft naaaah. Get off my lawn!!
I mean, Linux does make that percentage lower nowadays tbh. I know some manufacturers care but the grand majority dont see the 0.something as their audience
"they just give up" - I mean, sounds like a them problem?
Even if you can figure it out, it’s still just unintuitive and a hassle. Theres a lot of friction and friction is the enemy of adoption. I’m a datacenter engineer and despite know exactly how Mastodon works it would just be too much time and effort to get the content flowing. I setup my account, figured I’d get around to it and never did. I wouldn’t blame any average person for just not feeling. Like putting in the effort.
The only reason I’m on Lemmy because I followed specific subreddits here so I didn’t need to go looking for anything.
Except facebook used to be like that, and somehow we did just fine. Shit myspace just gave you Tom when you signed up for a new account and nobody found that confusing either.
Standards have certainly changed, but it's really not that hard to follow a few people that look slightly interesting and grow your network based on who they post.
Yes clunky, unintuitive social media platforms did just fine back when they were all equally immature, clunky and unintuitive. But social media has changed a lot in the past 20 years and it’s grown to be more intuitive, usable, and relatively frictionless to adopt.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every Tom Dick and Harry who are used to modern social media platforms built on decades of improvements to form and function, to just dive in head first to an experience that rivals the social media of a bygone era.
Facebook had an advantage in that you very likely already knew 98% of the people you wanted to add as a friend by name, and only had to search their name. After adding your friends, most of the work of setting up facebook is done
Honestly lemmy shouldn't take more than 2-3 minutes if you've created accounts for stuff like reddit or discord before