
The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent - ardy42
https://thewalrus.ca/the-rise-of-the-tech-savvy-parent/
======
ddebernardy
It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" \- whatever that
means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom
need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers.

Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in
the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource
intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes need to free
up memory by messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat. Good times...

~~~
noir_lord
I'm seeing this right now, I grew up programming (started at 7), at 9 I was
way more computer fluent than my 9 year old step-son is now.

I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that you
never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you (rarely)
do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve what is
broken.

His trouble shooting process is handing it to me and telling me "it's not
working".

I refuse to fix it unless he watches and pays attention to how I'm fixing it,
slowly he's starting to understand that none of this stuff is magic.

I don't care if has no interest in computers generally but I think it's
important that he realises the devices/technology he interacts with isn't just
a magic black box.

He was interested in what I was programming the other day though so I told him
we could build a website together as long as he chose the subject, wrote what
he wanted to put on it and wrote the code with my supervision, inevitably it's
going to be about Fortnite but I'll take whatever wins I can get.

Generally I'll ask answer his questions with questions, we had a discussion
about IP addresses the other day (though he had know idea what an IP address
was) because he was curious how one computer "talks" to another so I asked a
bunch of questions "Assuming you had lots of computers how would you tell one
from the other" "I'd number them" "Ok, so what if you wanted to replace a
computer but keep talking to it as if it was the old computer?" "I'd make it
so the numbers could be changed for each computer", "OK, so you have millions
of computers with millions of numbers how would you know which number went
with which computer?" "well...I'd name them but in a way that I could say this
name belongs to this number", I was proud, he pretty much figured out DNS
without knowing DNS was a thing.

So then I showed him the config panel for a web host and pointed out that his
names and numbers where an actual thing.

~~~
jeena
> I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that
> you never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you
> (rarely) do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve
> what is broken.

You have the same problem with cars. When I was 18 I was able to disassemble
and reassemble my car and basically fix anything which broke. I even replaced
the bodywork one time after a crash.

Today nobody even changes their summer-/winter-tires on their own anymore, let
alone changing oil or renewing breaks.

You could also say that the machines became so reliable and so complicated
that most people don't need too look under the hood and if they need it's too
complicated anyway.

~~~
ecshafer
One issue with cars is that many of the simple tasks to cut your teeth on, can
now require a lot of work. I had a car that you couldn't change the battery
without removing a wheel and using a lift.

------
sxates
When I was a kid, my dad changed the oil in our cars, replaced brakes and
spark plugs, and if it broke down he could at least diagnose it if not fix it
himself.

Now I'm grown up, and cars have changed a lot. I have a tesla, and the only
thing I can really service on it myself is the washer fluid. But it's also
more reliable and doesn't need constant tinkering.

This was what came to mind reading this. I was of the "tinker" generation with
computers, which have changed a lot since then. More reliable, more user
friendly. I don't expect my children will have the same relationship with them
I did, just like I didn't have the same relationship with cars my parents did.
But maybe they will be the tinker generation of something else...

~~~
metaphor
Sorry but I don't buy the argument...or perhaps _can 't_ is more appropriate?

There are only two things that genuinely preclude owners from servicing their
own vehicles (Tesla or otherwise): a lack of will, and vehicle manufacturers
refusing to sell technical manuals[1] to anyone other than authorized service
shops.

Sure technology has appreciably advanced in 30 years, but the fact that
technical details and know-how are scarce commodities in the age of
information is _not_ a generational coincidence.

[1] [https://www.helminc.com](https://www.helminc.com)

~~~
skybrian
A major difference is that our relationship to risk has changed. For example,
working on some parts of a Tesla or some parts of a hybrid would mean working
with high-voltage equipment. Although I know some of the principles, I am
hesitant to be my own electrician. I'm very cautious just doing a jump start.

Of course, this has always been the case, people just accepted (or didn't
understand) the risks. The capacitors in an old TV could pack quite a charge.
Working on a roof has its risks. Early chemistry kits let kids blow stuff up.
Apparently it was accepted more, before.

~~~
metaphor
There's a weird relationship between electricity and self-confidence that I've
never quite understood; suspect it's similar to the phenomena that enables
math to be the only general academic subject in which it is socially
acceptable to suck at, and/or related to a lack of "correction window" when
tinkering with forces that propagate at the speed of light.

That being said, I'd posit that having a set of technical manuals at your
disposal would dramatically change this perception to the detriment of certain
lucrative service markets. Everything breaks; the real question is who has the
capacity to administer repairs, and at what cost?

~~~
hopler
It's really easy to kill yourself if you go messing around in your house
wiring. It's possible to be safe, but it's not on the same plane as messing
with an unplugged washing machine or TV.

~~~
Nasrudith
Barring fires it isn't that hard. Just turn off the circuit breakers for
absolutely everything in the area and test the voltages just in case there is
any capicitance before touching any wires. I am a complete neophyte with
wiring but that part is simple.

------
EliRivers
Related, [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-
co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

Computers, for the majority of people, are now principally consumption
devices, with some small amount of guided typing of tweets and chats (which I
think I would argue is effectively consumption still, in much the way that I'd
consider someone speaking on the telephone to be a consumer of that service).

I would not expect someone who watched a lot of movies to be good at making
them; I would not expect someone who reads a lot of books to be a whizz when
it comes to typesetting and printing; I would not expect someone who eats a
lot of sandwiches to be competent at baking bread; I would not expect someone
who watches Netflix and reads tweets to be good at configuring or programming
the computer they're using to do it.

------
high_derivative
I have long thought the term 'digital native' is a sort of filter for people
who are not actually technologists but avid consumers of mostly social
platforms.

I (as a computer scientist) have never heard people actually working in tech
refer to themselves as that.

~~~
ghaff
It's a term and concept that came out of essentially sociology writing by a
number of different people in the late 90s and early 2000s.

As the linked article suggests though, it's not clear it's a particularly
useful term. The digital immigrants are often more tech savvy in at least many
respects than the natives because they once had to be. And most of the people
I work with in tech have had absolutely no problem fully incorporating the
rideshare, social media, video/ music streaming, and mapping apps into their
everyday lives even though many first encountered them as adults.

Are there age-based differences in media consumption etc.? Sure. But that's
much more about generational preferences and habits than having grown up
before the Web.

------
iliketosleep
The people who are "digitally superior" as those who take an active interest
in learning the tech. They are young or old, and constitute only a small
percentage of the population.

------
II2II
This is something that I realized a couple of decades back, when my generation
was supposedly the computer savvy one, after meeting a man in his sixties.
While teaching computer programming to children I noticed that people tended
to correlate screen time with technical ability, even when the child was a
passive consumer. When I talk to children and youth today, I recognize
similarities between the ones that I hold technical coversations with and my
peers while I was growing up. I would not be surprised if the proportion of
youth engaged with technology remains relatively stable from generation to
generation.

------
anotheryou
I guess the first generation of digital natives (and those older who caught up
a bit later in life) will remain the only one who had to touch _relatively_
low level stuff (things as simple as a tree of folders and file endings).

~~~
davnicwil
I remember when one of the markers of being a technical person was using the
word directory vs the word folder.

It seems arbitrary but I think the reason is that non technical users always
feel more comfortable sitting at the exact level of abstraction of the
interface without translating it into what it actually is, in computing terms.
A folder is something you recognise, you put files in it, there's even an icon
that looks like a folder - a file extension is the 'type' of the file and
controls the progam that will open it. That's all you need to know.

I'm not sure those non technical users have got less technical with time, I
just think the abstraction has moved up a level from the OS and file storage
being something they have to think about regularly, to now apps mostly just
handling storage and files for you and presenting the data through their
interface (i.e. The concept of a file being separate from the app that uses it
is going away somewhat).

The people that were dealing with folders and file extensions may seem now in
retrospect to be more low level, but they weren't. That was just the
interface/abstraction available to them at the time. I don't think they had a
better model of what was going on underneath than someone today who just taps
app icons etc.

~~~
anotheryou
I think language is not the best indicator, because I think one should obey
the masses to keep communication efficiently, even if it hurts a bit
sometimes. (drone = quadcopter, autonomous quadcopter = autonomous drone or
something, app = mobile app, AI = ML/DL/if)

------
analog31
In my house, Mom and Dad are scientists, and quite tech savvy in our
respective fields, including digital technology supporting our work. I also
happen to have taken up programming and electronics as hobbies starting around
1981.

So I'm a tech savvy parent. Yet I've noticed some age differences. My kids are
"quicker" at picking things up. They can notice a tiny detail on a big screen,
and are more likely to recognize and remember the meaning of an icon, whereas
I have to hover over it with my mouse pointer and hope for a tool tip to pop
up.

So things like GUIs will seem more intuitive to them, when the real advantage
is their ability to quickly distinguish a bunch of tiny abstract symbols.

------
xbmcuser
The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when
it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology
than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing
where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact
with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.

~~~
joefourier
What exactly requires tech savviness about social media? The interfaces are
designed to be simple and intuitively usable by the lowest common denominator.
The platforms' front-ends expose almost nothing about they actually work, and
there is almost no way for an average user to fix any problems should they
occur, or to customize the closed-source app released in the walled garden.
Does Instagram teach you about image codecs? Does the average user have any
idea how the computer vision in Snapchat filters works? When YouTube suffers
an outage, what can they do but shrug and wait until the people working there
fix it?

That's exactly what the article above is saying. The kids aren't learning any
problem solving skills. They may be better at following social media trends,
knowing the latest memes, and finding the latest hot new app, but that has
nothing to do with technical aptitude.

~~~
ghaff
It's more akin to the fact that I'm woefully unaware of most new pop music
coming out these days as well as many TV shows/films/video channels that cater
to a younger audience. Given that I'm at least reasonably connected on social
media I'm probably not as completely in the dark as some my age, but I'm
certainly not pop culture savvy.

~~~
zanny
What is "pop culture" even? Its just a measure of targeted advertising towards
the most ill equipped to respond to it productively or healthily. There was
pop culture targeting your parents, yourself, your kids, and there will be
something targeting your kids kids.

The fact you show no interest in it is more a reflection that you got through
the dredge of surface level vapid entertainment all kids are subject to, come
out on the other side, and realize "hey look, theres stuff thats a lot better
/ more interesting than that" and unsurprisingly gravitate towards that over
the next iteration of entry level disposable culture targeting kids.

------
dbg31415
Consumer tech has been refined and dumbed down to the point where everything
just sort of magically works, and since it's "magic" you never have to dive
into the nuts and bolts. By making it so easy to use, we are depriving people
of their opportunities to organically learn like people in my generation had
to.

Exceptions exist.

* Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk)

~~~
traderjane
In what way were people able to introspect into their computing devices for
learning? By being able to poke around OS details or the filesystem?

Doesn't it sound more important to have an IDE + fluid building so people
don't have to care about the details?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There's no such thing as "don't have to care about the details."

This is the biggest difference between then and now. In the 70s and 80s
computing was all about details, all the way down to the hardware, which most
developers understood at the register level.

8-bit amateurs grew up with simple toy machines. They learned enough detail to
allow a natural transition to professional development on mainframes and minis
- far more detail and more complexity, more of an OS to deal with, but with a
recognisably similar outline.

Now most development is more like LEGO - clip moving parts to other moving
parts in a slightly precarious way and hope nothing breaks.

It's a completely different way of thinking about computing - kit and cookbook
based, with less space for original creation and problem solving. This is
partly because the details are hidden and can't be changed, but also because
the ethic of experimentation and creativity based on deep domain knowledge
driven by curiosity isn't the same.

~~~
wilsonnb3
> There's no such thing as "don't have to care about the details."

The whole point of the many abstractions between the user and the hardware is
so they don’t have to care about the details.

~~~
dkersten
Not caring about the details leaves us with people who can't fix simple issues
and with applications that use way too much cpu, memory or energy than they
really should. Sure, a lot of people don't care and just want to do the thing,
but if you at all care that your computer that is 1000x as powerful as the one
you had years ago, but doesn't really do a lot more, then you have to care. If
you care about the users of your application and don't simply pass your lower
development effort on to them in terms of performance cost, then you have to
care. If you want to be able to fix your own issues, then you have to care.

Yes, the abstractions mean people can do more without caring, which in turn
means more people can use them, but it comes at a cost too.

~~~
askafriend
Performance is a business decision.

It doesn’t come for free and ultimately other things might be more important.

~~~
eecsninja
If any performance gains from Moore's Law get canceled out by inefficient
software due to Wirth's Law, then what's the point of all the work that we
technologists are doing?

You can call it a business decision, but that basically means the tech people
are doing the work and making our execs rich without actually creating
anything that's more beneficial to humanity compared to the computer systems
of 10 or 20 years ago.

------
jahn716
There's definitely a false equivalency being made in being "more connected" as
meaning "superior."

Certainly younger generations will always be more accustomed to interfacing
with technology (this will never change). But that doesn't mean they
understand it.

------
TadaScientist
Get a raspberry pi and a couple of how-tos and you can watch your kid become
addicted to making things sing with code.

------
fmajid
It has nothing to do with generation. About 5% of the population has the
neurological wiring that makes a good programmer. The rest are just passive
users of technology, just as clueless politicians and educators seem to think
teaching Excel (a useful skill) somehow constitutes Computer Science.

~~~
auxym
Do you have a source for that 5% figure?

I mean, I suspect as much from my own experience, but I'm curious to know if
there's actual research out there.

~~~
dkersten
From my own personal experience, I believe that most people can learn most
things, but they need the motivation to do it. I find that most learning
material for programming (especially courses/lectures) don't do a very good
job at providing motivation. I also believe that most teachers are simply not
that good at teaching, sadly, which makes learning hard. For example, often
you're given an example, but not enough information to get from a blank page
to the example by yourself. I do believe that its mostly nurture and only a
tiny bit nature (the nature is mostly in our tolerance for certain things,
especially problems we face, rather than in our ability to tackle them).

