
Ask HN: Is the Rising Generation More or Less Computer Literate? - lr4444lr
I&#x27;ve witnessed two opposing narratives:<p>1) Kids today are more computer literate because they are exposed earlier to computers than ever before, which are more accessible and embedded in every day life, including in peer-reinforced activities. They intuit the common interactions, allowing them to pick up new systems quickly. For children, computers are like a new &quot;language&quot; which their agile minds are better suited to learn than for older people.<p>2) Kids today are less computer literate because the predominant uses are increasingly abstracted around humanized GUIs, and even &quot;advanced&quot; actions are procedurally simplified to steps that require only a basic literacy with much less an understanding of the underlying structure than you had to know in decades past to do basic things. A similar situation happened with cars: many fewer today know how to drive manual shift because automatic transmissions predominate (this might be a U.S. centric statement, but you get the drift) whereas once you had to learn in order to use a car at all.<p>Perhaps this question will get more anecdotes than data, but I was surprised in this day and age how hard to was to find quality studies beyond skills like &quot;can you check your e-mail&quot;, when news cycles increasingly whip up a moral panic about automation wiping out massive numbers of jobs.<p>Curious to hear other (especially international) perspectives.
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telebone_man
I talk about this all the time with my fiancé, who is head of IT for a
foundation school in the UK (think, 4 to 6 year olds).

An interesting thing is your 2nd narrative (e.g. kids aren't computer literate
because interfaces are so simple) has actually had a knock on effect to non
computer skills.

For example, they noticed 5 years ago that childrens ability to pick up
writing skills (fine motor skills with a pencil) was diminishing. At the same
time, the school had purchased a bunch of tablet computers. They noticed kids
could easily point a finger. And have since done a survey each year with
parents to assess how many kids have tablets at home.

Year in year, the ability for children to learn to use a pencil has
diminished, and the number of kids with tablets at home has increased.

In summary, simplified computer interfaces have made kids/parents lazy in
developing fine motor skills and it's affected their ability to learn to
write.

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AnimalMuppet
I think the children are good at _using_ computers. Also, many are good at
programming computers - but at a more superficial level than some children
were a generation ago. A generation ago, you had to know much more to achieve
the same effect, so people had either deeper knowledge or none.

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nabla9
At least here in Finland it has was the assumption among educators that once
you give children computers, smartphones etc. they become good at using them
(diginatives was the term). Kids would know how to search information from the
net and it would help learning. Schools bought computers and tablets but did
not increase ICT education.

Going light on teaching ICT skills backfired. Finland is now below average in
computer skills for the youg and young adults.

Now it turns out that most kids don't learn to use computers unless you teach
them. They can do just enough to play games and communicate with others. They
don't necessarily know how to use email or search data efficiently.

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coralreef
A definition of computer literacy is required. That would probably go a long
way in helping to answer the question.

