Generational wars doesn’t do anyone any favors.

I’m an older GenZ born in the late 90s and I’ve had to show a few younger peers how to torrent recently.

The idea of you needing a “special” program just for downloading a file seems to throw some of them off.

I do know a few young people are tech/programming wizards but “generally tech savy” people seem to be declining. It’s either you’re really into it or barely know anything outside popular apps.

One other thing I’ve noticed, People just seem to be more paranoid about downloading stuff not already installed on their devices. Which its good people give at least a bit of a shit about security but convincing people Firefox isn’t a virus gets a bit annoying (Yes I’ve had that conversation).

I think the gap stems from need. Most people only learn what they absolutely need to. My sister and I are just 3 years apart in age. Yet I am pretty familiar with tech, while she knows next to nothing. I was always there to fix whatever broke. Even now she knows that if she needs to watch something, she can just ask me to add it to my Jellyfin server. I often have to remote into her system to fix stuff.

The Gen Z we’re talking about here mostly grew up using phones, and phone OSes do their best to hide any complexity away from the user. So they never learnt anything. I’m also technically Gen Z (very early), but growing up in rural India, I had to teach myself how to pirate since streaming wasn’t a thing yet (our internet was too slow for that anyway), and the local theater didn’t play anything except local mainstream cinema.

as a high schooler with a special interest in computers, it’s genuinely surprising how poor most of my peers computers skills are. most of my peers don’t even know the very basics of folder structures.

also unrelated, let’s all love lain

I think it’s more a generational gap in basic computer skills.

Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux. We understand computers (mostly) and the (various) paradigms they use.

Gen Z is what I refer to as the iPad generation (give or take a few years). Everything’s dumbed down and they never had to learn what a folder is or why you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in “Documents” library and just using search. (i.e. throw everything in a junk drawer and rummage through it as needed).

As with millennials who can’t balance a checkbook or do basic household tasks, I don’t blame Gen Z for not learning; I blame those who didn’t teach them. In this case, tech companies who keep dumbing everything down.

Edit: “Balance a checkbook” doesn’t have to mean a physical transaction log for old school checks. It just means keeping track of expenditures and deposits so that you know the money in your account is sufficient to cover your purchases. You’d be surprised how many people my age can’t manage that.