Those tech illiterate kids

Is it ironic that kids these days, born to a society so saturated with technology it could not otherwise function, have no idea how any of it works? 

I'd finally ticked off the last item on the day's to do list, and I was wrung out (they tell us everyone should learn CPR, but try to enrol an aardvark in a beginner's CPR class and everyone gets mad). I figured I'd earned as a reward a few minutes peace, and settled myself into the couch, pillows plumped behind my back just so, to enjoy a little quiet reading. So of course my peace was swiftly and inevitably interrupted by a semi-insistent "Muuu-uuum?"

And just as I was getting to the part of the book where the action turns slightly steamy...I mean, just as I was really starting to digest the fresh insights and context I was gaining from the 8,000 word investigative article on our current geopolitical situation. But I tried not to show my irritation, because I don't want to screw up my kid by making them feel invalidated (there are tonnes of things I do that will screw up my kid, so I try to limit the things I can control). I deliberately put a smile on my face before saying "yes, schmookums?"

"My computer is being weird." 

"What exactly do you mean by weird?"

"It's acting funny. It just ain't right."

I knew from experience that further questioning of Mr 13 was unlikely to produce useful or even coherent responses on account of his being 13, so I controlled my sighs admirably though I say so myself, as I told him "bring it out, I'll take a look", and so endeavoured to diagnose and hopefully fix whatever was wrong with his computer, with only the preliminary report of being weird, acting funny, and not being right to work from. 

It turned out the computer was almost completely out of free RAM, so I deleted temporary files, removed a couple of programs he never used, and did the task manager and disc clean up things. As I did so, he stood hovering over me shifting from foot to foot, reminding me both of the kid himself when he was little and left it til the last minute to tell me he needed the bathroom, and also of bosses I've had who'd rush over just as I was about to leave for the day, announcing they urgently needed me to complete an item of work that was sitting on their desk all day then proceeding to hover over my desk waiting for me to complete it (the output usually ended up in the same place either way). So I did a proper shut down restart and handed back the computer, which he took to his room without a word, until 90 seconds later when he called out "thanks, it worked!" 

"Okay, but let me show you what I did so you can do it yourself next time."

"Nah, I'll just watch a You Tube video about it."

"That's what you said last time."

Sound familiar? I don't mean the part about being interrupted as soon as you get comfy, although I'm sure we can all relate - if you don't have a human child, substitute dog whining to go out/cat making "I'm about to chuck" noises/new Hardcore History just dropped.

But if you've spent any time with members of Gen Z or, and God bless and save us, there's a Gen Alpha now up and around and doing things, you may have noticed that these kids, born into a world where not being able to rely on touchscreens for everything was scarcely imaginable, have no idea how any of this works. When the Mr 13 was the two year old Baby G, we took him on an outing to a nature park, where he tried to use his fingers to make the pictures on the metal information plaques bigger. I'm not particularly technologically savvy, apart from a low level talent for making the printer work. 

(And if you work in an environment where printing is still utilised, don't ever share that you have such a talent with your co-workers. I used to mention it during team building activities where we were required to say something interesting about ourselves, and I didn't think there was much that was interesting about me, not that could be safely brought up in a professional setting anyway. Then for the whatever remained of my period of employment, I'd be interrupted every few minutes by colleagues saying "sorry to interrupt, but can you come take a look at why the printer isn't working?". I wanted to tape a note above the printer saying "Read the screen and check the trays before bothering Nico; it's usually that you are out of paper or have put fresh paper in the wrong tray", but I was told that was too passive aggressive. I don't know. I could have gone with straight out aggressive and made co-workers actually sorry that they'd interrupted me.)

Nothing I had done to his computer was particularly obscure or advanced or in any way difficult; they were just basic tasks one would expect anyone with reasonable familiarity with the Windows environment to perform without difficulty. But when I raise with Mr. 13 the possibility of him doing these things himself, he not only doesn't know how, he has no idea what I am talking about (and resists attempts to learn). It's not just him though - it seems like a tonne of kids who are teenagers about now have so little idea how to use actual computers they'd put the apocryphal middle aged office worker of the 1990s who put correction fluid on the screen of the boxy PC they were finally forced to use to shame. Donald Trump bragged he was amazed by the technological prowess of his 18 year old son Barron because the kid was able to turn a laptop on. That's actually more than some of them can handle. 

Kids these days, huh? All the problems are their fault, and in no way the fault of the generation who raised them or previous generations who created the world they live in. 

XKCD

(Of course, this is a generalisation. If your little ray of sunshine was born in 2013 and used to design their own Linux GUIs but lately prefers working directly in the terminal, please disregard this post and give me your address so I can send you a small present to apologise for my appalling oversight in failing to address your family's individual situation). 

When technology is used for everything, you just expect it to always work and don't really care how it does. Maybe there's something to that old adage that you don't appreciate something unless you've worked for it. The first widely available personal computers were hard to operate - starting from getting the box in from the car (those old CRT monitors weighed a tonne).  But we wanted to learn, so we did, and took it for granted we'd install the driver, reconfigure the graphics card, download the mod, try a different mod when the first one didn't work, and on and on just to install a new game or program. There was some expectation that we might use the computer for more complex things; Logo and BASIC were widely taught to school children, including your uncongenial author, as the foundations for a potential future in more advanced programming languages. Computers got a little easier to use as the internet became widespread even as the internet itself wasn't; Milennials taught themselves CSS and HTML just to blast Fall Out Boy whilst I was saying "but there's Garbage by Garbage and OK Computer. Music peaked back then.  Why do they keep releasing new stuff? Why do you listen to it?". I was a grumpy old woman at 25. 

Now, touch a screen and there's your new app installed for you to ignore until you get a notification that you haven't used the app in 12 months and should probably delete it. Everything saves to the cloud automatically. Many kids don't much use computers at all until they get to high school; it's all tablets and phones. When things are easy, people get lazy - becuase of course we do. For most of human history, humans have had to work and struggle for survival. We had to reserve energy wherever we could. We evolved as a species to take it easy whenever we can. And technology today is easy. It encourages warm familiarity, not challenge. Why would the average teenager look at a phone and think "I should learn how the open source kernel powers this thing and marry it to my GPU interface"? (Once again, I apologise to the parents of the annoying little shit who does know all these things. I'm sure your child won't end up living with their polycule in the Bahamas before it all goes the down the drain and they wind up in prison for 25 years after defrauding investors billions of dollars in whatever comes after crypto). 

My kid is nothing unusual here. I asked if any of his friends were any good at using computers either. Could they run an anti virus scan? Clear cache on a phone or tablet? Did any of them even know what any of this means or why they should do it? None of them could. These are generally bright kids, in the advanced classes, into Dungeons and Dragons and endless discussion of potential science experiments involving explosions. But none of them, if faced with a frozen desktop or disconnection from WiFi, could do much to address the problem other than take the machine to an embarrassingly uncool parent in the hope that the poor wretch born in the 1980s who probably still owns CDs could rectify the problem. 

As today's teens strike out on their own, without their parents to solve their minor tech issues they'll regard their phones and computers the way most of us regard cars and sewage systems. If we don't have a knowledgable relative available to take a look, we know it's best we don't get involved and to take things to someone qualified, or at least someone who knows what they're doing. 

I see a business opportunity in this; kiosks in shopping centres to fix the minor tech niggles of the Gen Alphas. It might be a little slow to get off the ground, what with economic conditions meaning they don't leave home (and the parents who can assist with tech) until they're 28, but an easily accessible while you wait service where the confused child of the 2010s can just say "my phone's acting , can you take a look?" and within ten minutes the proprietor will either have ascertained and rectified the problem. 

Maybe I shouldn't have outlined this plan publicly, but almost no one reads this blog anyway, especially not anyones looking for a business opportunity. But if any angel investors are intrigued by this, let me know. I'm sure I could piss millions of dollars before the company even launches up a wall and lie to the IRS to write the whole thing off with the best of them I already owe the parents of the 2013 Linux kid a present. And maybe with a bunch of cash to splash around, my kid will stop saying I'm out of touch, what with the way I can fix phone and computer niggles and all. No one needs to fix anything when we can just buy new ones.