so… people who take typing lessons and actively try to improve it have better typing skills than the ones who don’t. Shocking.
Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
Submitted 1 week ago by neme@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.techspot.com/news/104623-think-gen-z-good-typing-think-again.html
Comments
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I mean, as a millennial, I mostly taught myself to type. I’m fast enough, but have bad technique and could be faster. I was only ever actually trained to type in grade school, and barely. Once in a while in computer class we would play an educational typing game.
My mom is much better at typing than I am, because she was trained to type in college. That’s not really a thing anymore.
Anatares@lemmynsfw.com 1 week ago
I learned by playing StarCraft on 56k modem. VoIP was not possible so you had to type fast. Style is wildly non-standard but i was typing fast enough not to see a benefit from standard style.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I had typing tutor software on the family PC. It made the mistake of trying to teach typing by starting with only home row keys, then expanding outward from there. So for a very long time, you would type things like adj daf jal ls; dal fka and so forth. It was a very long time until you really started to get it.
And then MSN chat rooms and messenger happened to me, and suddenly touch typing was the main way I had to hit on chicks. I knew what the home row was, so I knew what touch typing looked like, so I started actually doing it, but typing things I wanted to type. I’m now the third fastest typist I know. On a good keyboard with a passage I’m familiar with I can key 106WPM, right now typing conversationally out of my brain I’m probably hitting about 65 or 70.
vividspecter@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I only learned to touch type properly because I was bored one summer and went cold turkey and learned Colemak. Before that, I had this weird pseudo touch typing technique with some keys being touch typed and others not, and because of the muscle memory, it was difficult to change.
nutsack@lemmy.world 1 week ago
that’s because they’re not using computers or doing work
Asafum@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I’d have to imagine most of the people calling them “tech savvy” are just seeing them on phones/tablets which are mostly “dumbed down” hardware in comparison to what you can do with a PC. There isn’t much to know about operating a phone or tablet.
ricdeh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Dumbed down hardware? No, the hardware of smartphones is very impressive. It is the software that is dumbed down in the sense that it takes control away from the user or operator.
Emerald@lemmy.world 1 week ago
or doing work
Did you just pull a “kids these days don’t want to work anymore”?
Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Think it’s missing the f. Computers for work
ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 1 week ago
They are not tech-savvy, we had to dumb down technology so boomers and gen Z’ers could use it.
ravhall@discuss.online 1 week ago
Well, we dumbed it down for the boomers, but never trained the kids.
ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place 1 week ago
Because they didn’t need training. Or that’s what we all thought. They were born with an internet that was basically Google. We needed to learn command line, they needed to learn how to press one button.
And it really is that way… Until they need to do something more complex and realize they can’t.
Johnmannesca@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I agree the ‘tech-savvy’ phrase has outdone its use. We should use a better phrase, like ‘tech-indoctrinated’ or ‘tablet-fed’ to give a better perspective into these younger kids’ digital lifestyles.
wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I can see the alphas railing against the term “tablet-fed”. They are NOT gonna like that.
That’s gonna be what us cranky old millennials call them later while we would be yelling at them to get off our lawn. But we won’t yell that, because none of us will own any yards.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I can see the alphas railing against the term “tablet-fed”. They are NOT gonna like that.
they’ll just yell at millenials and genz for raising them like that lmao
Ilandar@aussie.zone 1 week ago
The actual term for Alphas is “iPad kid” lol
TriflingToad@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I disagree for the term “tablet-fed” as it classifies anyone who used a tablet growing up and not people who stayed within the cushy UX bounds. A lot of the future programmers & tech savvy people are going to have grown up from using tablets. Example, installing mods for minecraft PE when i was ~7 was my first experience actually doing something with tech.
I’m not far enough down the tech rabbithole to use Arch like a lot of people here, but compared to the rest of the population who can’t find powerpoint that’s *right infront of their faces *I’d be considered tech-savvy to them.
Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Guess that means I’m uncle tech support forever
Cyyy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
back when i was still a teenager, ww did battle ourselfes who typed faster even without a keyboard lol. We just typed on a table or something just based on our finger memory of where which key is normally on a keyboard. This days i often type on my smartphone, but you can’t rly type a lot or fast on phones so i still prefer normal computer typing for most things. But people who just chat and don’t code or similar…yeah, they probably are mostly only using their phone. my sister as an example hasn’t used her laptop for nore than 4 years, probably more… and just does everything on her phone.
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 1 week ago
Swype typing can get pretty fast tbh. But that greatly depends upon the software.
Despite the hate it got, Windows Phone’s default keyboard had a far superior swype experience as compared to Android and iOS.jacksilver@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Microsoft actually ported their keyboard to android, called “Microsoft SwiftKey” or similar. It’s a great keyboard, but apparently now has copilot ಠ_ಠ
Summzashi@lemmy.one 1 week ago
This might be true but WPM is a very stupid way to measure this argument.
MeThisGuy@feddit.nl 1 week ago
yeh, strokes per minute sounds a lot better
nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 week ago
Keyboard typing is a manual skill distinct from tech savvy and has to be taught as such. You’re not going to learn it by dealing with a touchscreen swipe “keyboard”. I’ve known a fair number of programmers who were two-finger typists because they were too busy taking CS courses to learn to type.
On the gripping hand, my early-Boomer mother, who learned on typewriters, can type fast and accurately but is quite technophobic.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
the entire stereotype that gen Z is amazing at technology is overrated, it’s the same as the millennials there’s some people who have excellent troubleshooting skill and are able to use technology with very little issue, and then there’s some that you can tell that they operate technology strictly on memorization not actually understanding how it works. You can differentiate the two by modifying their environments slightly and seeing if they struggle to figure how to do the stuff they normally do.
It’s actually more likely that with how user friendly environments are, that gen Z is less Savvy when it comes to using technology then the Millennials due to the fact that they’ve been pampered into environments that don’t require them to think outside the box, when I worked in the customer service field, it leans towards technical service and most of my customers who requested help were either Boomer or Gen Z, Millennials overall seemed to have the troubleshooting skills to be able to figure out problems without involving a third party.
That being said like above, this was a person to person basis I did have some Boomers who were able to rock the kiosks or have the troubleshooting the skills to be able to do it; just as I had gen Z that was able to rock the kiosk as well I’m just stating my observation of what usually happend.
Then to address the keyboard skills, most of what gen Z uses is going to be touchscreen, the desktop / laptop is a dying technology as a primary device for the younger kids as a whole, my sister didn’t even have one until she entered College(outside of a school laptop) because she just used her mobile phone or tablet, neither of those required a keyboard outside of an on-screen which you can’t use with the home system layout that used to be taught in school. So it’s only natural that gen Z might have fallen behind in keyboard skills
Manzas@lemdro.id 1 week ago
I am a zoomed and I agree the schools now need to have information lessons like how to use normal computers and excel
ian@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Not being fast at typing does not mean you are not tech savvy. There is more to tech than typing. Like an architect doesn’t need to be good at brick-laying to be a good architect.
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Funny that you chose an architect. Since they are basically document producers (also software architects), they tend to be able to type pretty proficiently.
ricdeh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
But that is not the comparison they drew, and you know that.
joel_feila@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Really shows the difference between Knowing how to work with, and how it works
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Tech has evolved to intentionally give less and less choice to the user. Tech skills have declined on average as a result.
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m the oldest of Gen z (early 1990s). I have two younger siblings who are also Gen Z. Typing was a skill we learned in middleschool/ elementary. When I was about 8, we learned how to use google because it was considered a great resource to find information. By the time my middle sibling was in similar classes, they moved away from Google due to NSFW search results. When my youngest sibling was in school, they worried about shock sites.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Gen Z started in 97, IIRC
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I said the opposite of what I meant, my bad.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Besides boomers all generations are completely made up and have no hard set start and end dates.
ravhall@discuss.online 1 week ago
Outside forces, like challenging their teaching?
They can still google dicks at home.
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It was more the dicks showing up in class unprompted. Then, it was people sharing links to shock sights. Now we have to worry people stealing information.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Do public schools not teach keyboarding anymore? I ask because I had a keyboarding classe two-hrs 1day per week in grade school plus a full class one year in 7th grade and then again for a full year in high school, and they were always taught by some of the oldest teachers in the school. -My high-school teacher started his career teaching typewriter typing something like three or four decades prior to teaching me in 2004. It seems strange that new young people aren’t getting that same basic education.
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
I don’t know if they do but if they do I doubt they’ve improved. The technique taught by many touch typing courses is a recipe for a wrist injury. It blows my mind that regulatory bodies aren’t calling for keyboard layout reform. The “normal” row stagger keyboard as well as the qwerty layout should be in museums, not on billions of “modern” computers around the world.
SSJMarx@lemm.ee 1 week ago
When I was a kid they taught penmanship too. I was awful at it but then when I was an adult I had a job where I actually had to use those skills and I was glad to have them - same thing with everything I learned in Home Ec. I think all of those classes are extinct now, based on how people talk about school never teaching them anything actually useful.
flashgnash@lemm.ee 1 week ago
We didn’t have specific typing class but we had IT in both primary and secondary, at least late gen z got plenty of computer time in school and most I know in my generation are decent typists at least
dragonlobster@programming.dev 1 week ago
The physical keyboard is just a tool. There are alternatives like speech-to-text software, virtual keyboards with swipe features, or stenotype.
The goal should be to use whatever is most effective and efficient for yourself, so if Gen Zrs are more used to touch screen, maybe they should invent a touch screen interface that you can use with the computer, maybe even incorporating the mouse somehow.
For me personally the touch interfaces right now are fucked up - I always tap the wrong letters on my phone, the auto-correct and suggestions used to compensate for this often times make it even worse, and swipe doesn’t come up with the words I want, I often have to swipe multiple times. I can’t imagine operating a computer like this, but maybe for Gen Zrs it’s no problem.
Maybe in the future you just need to think the word and it appears on the screen, and typing would be obsolete.
piccolo@ani.social 1 week ago
Keyboards exist the way they are because typewriters did it that way for nearly 150 years, and had to be that way because they are a mechanical device. We havent even changed the design of PC keyboards since IBM basically perfected it in the 80s. Theres probably a lot of room to improve the keyboard, but we dont because simply its already a refined invention and fimilar. For example, qwerty made sense on a mechanical device, but it makes zero sense on an electronic device. But familiarity keeps people on qwerty. Funny enough, this effects touch keyboards too.
mwguy@infosec.pub 1 week ago
The goal should be to use whatever is most effective and efficient for yourself,
And if taught as they should be, that will be the keyboard.
Counting out 5*5 on your fingers works and might be the fastest way you’ve been taught to multiply, but that doesn’t mean we should excuse schools not teaching times tables and how to use a caluclator.
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 week ago
As a Gen Z, I just don’t get it. One-off message, note or comment is fine. But have you never happened to have a long-ish conversation while on your phone? You get tired soon and want to go for a normal-sized physical keyboard.
manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
I had to teach some zoomers how to send an email, especially about using bcc, pretty funny I have to say
Wrench@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I learned to touch type quickly mostly out of necessity to communicate quickly in online games before voice chat was a thing.
Petter1@lemm.ee 1 week ago
How would you learn keyboard typing, if one always types on the phone?! (I am not even Z and have to look on the keyboard)
snekerpimp@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I was a terrible typer as a kid, two finger hunt and pecker. Got a job that necessitated fast typing while listening or reading. I learned how to touch type, or fake it enough, really quick. Humans are adaptable, that’s why we are everywhere, they just need the motivation to learn the skill.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
For me it was AOL chat rooms and Star Trek role play that got my typing speed up, later followed by wow when voice chat was uncommon and communicating during a dungeon or raid required typing fast to not interrupt what you needed to do
PetteriPano@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Gen X here. I’ve got an average 123 WPM on typeracer, which puts me in the 99,8th percentile.
I started looking at the screen instead of the keyboard early on. There were touch typing classes as an option around 8th grade, I think, but it was literally just having a map of which fingers go where and typing text focusing on using the right fingers. I didn’t take one, but I think I’m using the right fingers for 80% of the keys. I’m moving my hands back and forth a bit to let my dominant fingers do the work.
I started playing MUDs in 1997 at age 13, and building up that muscle memory for every combination of two- or three letter commands probably did more than I’d care to admit. I still miss the responsiveness of a proper DOS prompt, or Linux tty.
Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Hell yeah, muds taught me to type fast, too :D. Realms of despair and others. Got me into modding, too, working on a custom server.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
When you fight by typing in a game, you tend to get good at it.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Which year is the dividing line for Gen X and Millennials?
PetteriPano@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I guess I might be a millennial or Xennial, then.
pahlimur@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I generalize millennials as too young to legally drink in the US (21) but old enough to remember the millennium. It’s not completely accurate though.
thecheddarcheese@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
i have 70. how.
PetteriPano@lemmy.world 1 week ago
A youth wasted playing MUDs, I guess. I was pretty fast before that, but I probably doubled my pace in a few years.
renzev@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Do these things correlate that much tho? Not to toot my own horn, but I am fairly tech-proficient and have terrible typing skills. My technique is somewhere in between hunt-and-peck and touch-typing, despite regular typing lessons in elementary school. I imagine a lot of other people are like this, and vice-versa as well.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Not at all. Is there any other profession than journalist where words per minute matters?
tempest@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Court room stenographer
Kalysta@lemm.ee 1 week ago
We’re not even teaching them cursive anymore and they still can’t type? What are they doing in schools?
notthebees@reddthat.com 1 week ago
Gen alpha is learning cursive. Gen z is all highschool and college now.
-worked in a k-8 tutoring program for 2 years.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I thought Gen Alpha was very explicitly NOT learning cursive.
Kalysta@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Good to know because the gen zer at work said she never learned it. So it may be up to each school district.
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 week ago
As a Gen Z - cursive is very much still taught in first grade, and not like you can forget it either because most school assignments are required in paper form, same for lecture notes. You’re not writing this much and this fast without cursive.
scripthook@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I have 7 typewriters. My son will know how to touch type :)
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Are computer labs still a thing in schools?
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 week ago
At my kid’s elementary school, they just have a charging rack full of cheap Chromebooks and the kids check one out in the morning and put it back in the afternoon. The middle schoolers get to take them home.
RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
European Gen Z here. My schools always had a computer lab and it was always “real” PCs, never in my life i actually saw a Chromebook.
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Here they are - in more well-funded schools at least. I keep seeing the posts about children being allowed laptops even at home, but here it would be unthinkable, because kids might break them or parents might steal them.
Apalacrypto@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Gen-X here with 2 Gen-Z kids. I developed my typing skills playing MUDS in the early 90’s. My kids are….ok….at typing, and despite my guidance over the years, are really bad at troubleshooting though when something goes wrong. It should “just work” to them. If it doesn’t, then the solution is to replace it.
However, I WILL SAY…my typing speed is about 100-110 WPM on a keyboard, and that my daughter could probably match that speed typing on her phone.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 week ago
The article is kind of all over the place mixing high-school graduates and fourth-graders? I can see how you're sluggish at typing in fourth grade... The numbers for a 17 year old would be interesting... But yeah, 13 words per minute isn't impressive. And most young people I know use phones and tablets, not computers. So naturally a good amount of them isn't good around these things.
Gingerlegs@lemmy.world 1 week ago
My sister is gen x and I’m a millennial, she’s asks me the most batshit insane questions like, how do I turn off my iPhone? What? You’ve had it 4 years!
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I feel like this calls for the importance of not just inundation but actual education for kids.
We basically let a whole generation have the relationship with the most common and arguably valuable be defined by advertising companies.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Does Gen Z actually have a tech savvy reputation? I was under the impression that the last few generations aren’t that great with computers as they more grew up with mature technology. It is the Gen X and Millennials that are more digital native while having used computers where advanced skills were required.
Ilandar@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Yes, with people who consider “uses the latest trending social media app regularly” to mean “tech savvy”. They are less technologically literate than Millennials, though, having been exposed to fewer transitionary technologies and being raised in a world where certain technologies, like the smartphone or internet, are so ubiquitous that there isn’t any of the “this is what it is and how it works” type education.
The difference is sort of like the difference between a qualified ESL teacher and a native English speaker who attempts to teach ESL. At first glance they may appear to be of equal ability but the ESL teacher who actually understands the what and the why because they have studied the language themselves will be a far more effective teacher than the native English speaker who basically acquired all of their skills by default and has never had that deeper understanding of them.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 week ago
This example is perfect - native teachers (regardless of the language being taught) are often clueless on which parts of their languages are hard to master, because they simply take it for granted. Just like zoomers with tech.
ravhall@discuss.online 1 week ago
I agree with you. I think they would kick everyone’s ass at thumb typing though. I was a T9 champion.