Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills

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• VerbFlow@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I blame the attempt to make devices user-friendly. Convenience kills skill.

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  • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    not userfriendlyness but dumbing everything down

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    • deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The difference between clearly documenting features, and hiding or removing them.

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• blady_blah@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Technology has moved from nitch nerdy thing to general public usage and as it did so it became usable without knowing what’s going on. Gen Z doesn’t know shit about technology, they just know how to use it.

  When I was a kid, if you wanted to get a computer working you had to screw with the RAM settings or build the computer yourself from components. If you didn’t know how to do this you talked with someone who did. I’ve forced my kids to learn at least some of this, but the idea that they’re more tech savvy is ridiculous. They’re users of tech, but it’s become too complicated (and more user friendly), so they don’t know what’s happening behind their screen.

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• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  and this is why i believe that having “user accessible” UI is actually bad, now im not saying every computer needs to use punch cards. I’m just saying that we need to establish some sort of standard for competence here. Linux is a really good example here.

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  • holdthecheese@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Maybe it doesn’t matter if someone is tech savvy. There was a time when we really valued the ability to fix your own car.

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    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s not totally de-valued. Being able to fix cars has gotten me laid more than probably anything else.

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    • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It was and still is valuable to be able to maintain the devices and machines that you and people around you use. I’m not sure why you seem to be implying that stopped being the case for cars.

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    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i think it does though, tech literacy is a huge boon to personal productivity, and work productivity. There is almost no scenario in which being somewhat tech literate isn’t good for you, i think it’s more like written language.

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    • skyspydude1@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, that time is even moreso now because cars are far more complex and expensive as fuck now. Just the HVAC system alone on a modern luxury car probably has more components than the entirety of my old 1972 MG. You can bet your ass my friends find it very valuable when I can quickly fix stuff on their cars a dealership wanted to charge $1200 for.

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• nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  that’s because they’re not using computers or doing work

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  • Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • ricdeh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Emerald@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    or doing work

    Did you just pull a “kids these days don’t want to work anymore”?

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    • Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Think it’s missing the f. Computers for work

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• ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They are not tech-savvy, we had to dumb down technology so boomers and gen Z’ers could use it.

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  • ravhall@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well, we dumbed it down for the boomers, but never trained the kids.

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    • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Johnmannesca@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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    • Ilandar@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The actual term for Alphas is “iPad kid” lol

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    • TriflingToad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Blaster_M@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Guess that means I’m uncle tech support forever

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• Cyyy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • jacksilver@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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• Summzashi@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This might be true but WPM is a very stupid way to measure this argument.

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  • MeThisGuy@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    yeh, strokes per minute sounds a lot better

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• nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• ian@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • ricdeh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      But that is not the comparison they drew, and you know that.

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• Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Tech has evolved to intentionally give less and less choice to the user. Tech skills have declined on average as a result.

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• Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • Manzas@lemdro.id ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I am a zoomed and I agree the schools now need to have information lessons like how to use normal computers and excel

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• joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Really shows the difference between Knowing how to work with, and how it works

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• Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • hddsx@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Gen Z started in 97, IIRC

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    • Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I said the opposite of what I meant, my bad.

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    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Besides boomers all generations are completely made up and have no hard set start and end dates.

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  • ravhall@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Outside forces, like challenging their teaching?

    They can still google dicks at home.

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    • Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • Cyyy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      qwertz ftw.

      *duck and run*

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  • SSJMarx@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • flashgnash@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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• dragonlobster@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • piccolo@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • mwguy@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Petter1@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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)

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• Wrench@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I learned to touch type quickly mostly out of necessity to communicate quickly in online games before voice chat was a thing.

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• snekerpimp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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• PetteriPano@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • roguetrick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    When you fight by typing in a game, you tend to get good at it.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Which year is the dividing line for Gen X and Millennials?

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    • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      1981

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    • PetteriPano@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I guess I might be a millennial or Xennial, then.

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    • pahlimur@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • thecheddarcheese@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    i have 70. how.

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    • PetteriPano@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A youth wasted playing MUDs, I guess. I was pretty fast before that, but I probably doubled my pace in a few years.

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• renzev@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not at all. Is there any other profession than journalist where words per minute matters?

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    • tempest@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Court room stenographer

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• Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We’re not even teaching them cursive anymore and they still can’t type? What are they doing in schools?

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  • notthebees@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Gen alpha is learning cursive. Gen z is all highschool and college now.

    -worked in a k-8 tutoring program for 2 years.

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    • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I thought Gen Alpha was very explicitly NOT learning cursive.

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    • Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Good to know because the gen zer at work said she never learned it. So it may be up to each school district.

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  • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Are computer labs still a thing in schools?

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  • wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I had to teach some zoomers how to send an email, especially about using bcc, pretty funny I have to say

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• hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    13 words per minute isn’t impressive

    Worse than that, it’s abysmal. That would’ve been a failing grade back when I had a few months of mandatory typing classes back in 6th grade. 40 WPM was an A, and arguably that was overly generous due to factors like 1) most students weren’t nearly as exposed to the keyboard in their daily lives as they are today, 2) the testmakers probably didn’t fully grasp how important the Internet would become, 3) the test intentionally obscured the keyboard so you had to go by feel, and 4) because of (2), the class was very short despite taking you from knowing no typing to using all the English-language keys. (I just barely passed it IIRC in the 45-ish WPM range.)

    On a whim, I decided to pull up a typing test – something I haven’t done in probably 5 years – and tried to see how I could do by simulating the speed of hunt-and-peck, and it came out to just under 20 WPM. Next, I tried to see what I could do if I only had my left hand, and it was 35 WPM with 97% accuracy. If you chopped off one of my hands, I could still type 2.7x faster than the average kid in that school’s fourth grade could – bearing in mind that that’s the average, meaning as long as the data is roughly normal, about half of the students fall below even that.

    That’s completely insane in a world where this iPad generation almost assuredly has tons of exposure to the QWERTY keyboard layout. It’s just inexcusable, it’s absolutely not the kids’ fault as them doubling their average typing speed after actually being taught to type shows that, and it totally tracks that it’s in Oklahoma.

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• scripthook@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I have 7 typewriters. My son will know how to touch type :)

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• Apalacrypto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• Gingerlegs@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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!

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  • rImITywR@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To be fair, they changed it in the last couple of years. It used to be that you held the power button to power it off. Now you have to hold the power button AND a volume button for some reason.

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    • Ilandar@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It has also changed on some Android phones. The default method of powering off the device is now through the notification shade and the power button has been turned into an assistant button. You need to go into the settings of the device and change it back.

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• fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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