this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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As someone who worked in IT support at a university and later as a sys admin: I believe MOST people (including young people) can not use the internet or a computer when it goes beyond installing and using a (popular) app from the App Store.
Many people can not, for example, look up a program via search engine, go to its website, find and click the correct download link and then install the program. Many people don’t even use websites anymore, they only use applications.
Their voices are missing online simply because they are basically tech illiterate. And I think that is a huge problem.
I’ll add to this that most people don’t understand the difference between a service and a client. Yes, even though they use email, to them it’s just “my gmail” and they don’t think past that. They don’t know you can use different clients, or the web. They just don’t. It’s an app on their phone.
The reason the internet was so great in the early 2000s is that THOSE PEOPLE WERENT ON IT.
I’ve had the most confusing conversation when a relative referred to their browser (Chrome) as “Google” (which to me means the search engine or the company, not the browser). It was only when they later mentioned Firefox as an alternative to Google that I realized what they were talking about.
Which is funny because if you open the App Store and search for Mastodon you'll find an app you can install and will prompt you to create an account and login.
Yes it will default to mastodon.social or whatever but that's a fine default.
Folks that say it's too hard just don't even want to try.
I'm sure it's not lack of technical skill it's a mental block, I've helped so many people set up software that is literally clicking ok a dozen times then they're like 'oh let me print this, hang on I need to compile a firmware update and flash it using a telegraph key...' big brands have the shittiest software, but people feel they should be able to understand because it's professional but something like an open source federated social network is nerd stuff so they feel the the shouldn't be able to.
Case in point, I installed MPV on a friends laptop because VLC wouldn't play the file without crashing, the install process is super simple but they have green on black hacker terminal output instead of a process bar and you type Y when prompted instead of clicking yes -- it gave her anxiety just watching me do it, said maybe we should try uninstalling VLC and reinstalling instead... Of course mpv played the video flawlessly and used less CPU and ram doing so which warmed her to it. There's no way she couldn't have understood everything and done it herself but the fact it's not as corporate as VLC would have written it off (and wow that's a crazy thing to say, I love that there's so much great open source software that VLC is middle of the road)
Definitely, some people have some weird kind of anxiety when it comes to this. I think in many cases they believe they aren't intelligent enough to get it and that only really intelligent people can understand these things.
It is the same in math. It has this aura of being super out there. And, let's be honest, it seems like some people in tech fields try to uphold that notion.
I try so hard to show people how to do things themselves when they ask me to help them with various tech......whatever, and almost universally get told "no."
Magic rectangle take me to Facebook, if it doesn't I need someone to make the magic rectangle take me to Facebook, and I refuse to understand it any further.
I've seen a number of polls on the age demographics on the fediverse, and they've all been pretty consistent ... the fediverse is basically on average a Xennial place with a surprising amount of Boomer. There are younger folks, of course, more so on lemmy/kbin than mastodon it seems (which is interesting).
But generally, in line with your comment, there's a generational filter here that attracts those who remember the value of and how to use the old internet and old computers.
Which, if you think there's value in what the fediverse is trying to do (free our expression and ownership on the internet), is a problem. Another way of looking at it is that the failure of allowing big-private-monopoly-social platforms to dominate for so long^1^ will have long lasting side effects including the erasure of what the internet can be in many people's understanding of the world.
[1]: I'd estimate 2008-2023 as the era of dominant big social, where the closing year of 2023 may be too early or even open ended. That's 14 years. Which, if we take the web as having started in 1993, and being ~30 years old, is about half the age of the internet. So, it's a decently objective approximation, then, to say that the web is Facebook etc, especially as the relevance of older things fades. Which only amplifies the harm we allowed to transpire.
Also ... check it out ... lemmy can do footnotes!! Click the
view sourcebutton to see how I did it if you're interested.I don't talk about age, though? As I mentioned in my post being tech illiterate is not necessarily a question of your age group.
Yes. Sorry if it seems I was distorting your message. I was just trying to draw a connection between different kinds of tech literacy and familiarity and how that might track with the demographics here and the history of mainstream tech.
Maybe a stretch, but also maybe I have a point.
No I do think you absolutely have a point!
That more young people than you would expect are missing from places like Lemmy I blame mostly on smartphones and tablets.
Over the last decades the numbers of students who own PCs/Laptops have dropped. When I first worked as a lecture assistant for computational statistics that was around 2011 almost every student had a PC or laptop and knew how to use it (to a different extent between them, of course).
The course is once a year, has about 90 students each time and, since it's about statistics, there is a mix of students from different fields. Most are from STEM fields, a few from social science or psychology. I could basically watch tech literacy deteriorate over the years.
This years course had only a third of people in it who actually use a PC/Mac outside of the course. There was not a single person who uses Linux this year. For the university's lecture platform or for online lectures they use their phone, tablet or a tablet computer which runs Android or iOS.
78 % of them did never write a line of code in their lifes, or so they say. The ones who did say they have programming experience often only had one of these "Learning to Code" Apps on their phones.
Most of them need extensive instruction and hand holding to install the programs we use (which is R and RStudio). You do not want to imagine how it is to teach these students basic coding in R. It is both my biggest joy and my biggest sorrow. The stories I could tell....
I highly doubt many of these students would find their way to the Fediverse. They do not think about privacy or freedom online because they are disconnected from the online world, in a way. They are simply consumers who do not feel as a part of it.
Reminds me of one time I was running a course in how to user git for uni students. Setting people up at the beginning, getting them just to install GitHub desktop, and someone puts their hand up having trouble installing the app. I get to them and see an iPad in the desk. Sighs, I explain that’s not going to work (maybe it does now?). They don’t understand why, because they can install so many other apps. I convinced them eventually. Not that I blame them, but it was interesting to see the user friendliness of a device basically block them from doing things and even understanding how that was happening.
For many with laptops, the course often became a gateway to the terminal and not finding it scary any more.
Also, thanks for your response!
I saw numbers from some study about tech and people's relationships with it or whatever and it's insane how many people think Facebook is the entire internet now that they've had that integrated browser for so long. It's just all they ever learned of technology, magic rectangle go to Facebook.
I understand not being "tech savvy," a "hobbyist," whatever - but I can't fathom not bothering to consider how something I use daily works AT ALL. I hate cars but I learned enough to understand how to tentatively diagnose a problem and handle minor maintenance myself, but some people take their car to the dealer like 4x a year instead.
Is madness.
People HATE learning. It makes them feel stupid. So they just avoid it.
Given the number of people I've had to walk through downloading my store's loyalty program app and set up their accounts, I'd believe it.
I had students (at university!) who, instead of starting the program, would either go through the whole process of downloading and installing the program or at least start the installer and installing it again each time they wanted to start the program.
Microsoft tried, they have the Windows Store and certain programs push you to use it, but UWP is an absolute disaster both from a user and a developer perspective so nobody wants that.
Microsoft took a good idea (software repositories) and turned it into a bad idea (software repository controlled by microsoft and you're not allowed to add/install/validate other repositories).
They could have built (hell, even USED) apt, but they built Store.
i couldnt count how many times my younger brother has asked me to delete files for him
My brother is a grown-up with a degree in finance and his own company and he also isn't able to do this.
He also refuses to understand that the photos he took with his phone are actual files on his phone. When he got a new phone and transferred his phone number he didn't understand why the photos didn't magically appear on the new phones camera app as well. (I think he was confused because he also uses Google Drive.)