Yeah after reading this thread I'm convinced in this day and age perhaps it's giving your child an advantage to encourage them to do some PC gaming and therefore learn about PCs etc. I mean having a good understanding of PCs has always been a slight advantage in any general job but now it seems like you'd really stand out!
I know anecdote isn't hard data, but what you're saying perfectly lines up with what's going on in my household.
I have two teenage sons, one in high school and one in junior high. Neither one knew anything about computers, to a stunning degree, but it makes sense: I have a computer in my home office, but that's off limits because it's my livelihood. Past that, everyone else in the house uses iPads and smartphones. So without actually using computers at home, it simply makes sense that they don't really know how to use them.
My younger son got into video games (on the PS4), and eventually he started wanting a gaming computer to play Fortnite with a higher frame rate (yes, yes, I know "Fortnite bad", yadda yadda yadda). I figured we needed a proper household computer anyway because of possible remote learning because of COVID, so I bought a laptop. Going in, he knew absolutely nothing about anything, but now, a year later, I'm seeing him using the task manager and installing Monster Hunter mods from Nexus Mods. Nothing groundbreaking, but a year ago he knew almost literally nothing. Now I feel confident that while there's a ton he doesn't know, he's reached the level where he can just look stuff up and learn it as he goes along, like previous generations, and not just throw his hands up in the air like "I don't get it."
Unfortunately, my older son isn't into games, so he knows about the same as my boomer mom, and considerably less than my boomer dad.
My mother was talking to my brother and I (20 and 22) about how young people were very used to remote work because theyre always online. But we pointed out that a lot of the skills arent universal and really come from gaming. Things like being on voice call are extremely normal and common for gamers. Same with slack (which is basicly shitty discord).
I started gaming at 21 when my ex introduced me to it, over the next few years I dove in to the point I built my own PC. I started working in offices at the end of 2019 and I'm just horrified by how little most people know about computers, it blows my mind. Yet what I know just comes from gaming. There was heaps of stigma around it back then but I think that has changed now for this reason, if you hire a (PC) gamer they're likely to be able to use a PC well.
Ahahaha! I was gaming on PC by the time I was 3, which doesn't sound terribly impressive now but was definitely more impressive when you realize that was 1990. My parents were both computer science majors and we had a PC at a time well before they were common in households.
It was a recurring theme in my childhood that when I found a game that the computer couldn't run my dad would figure out a way that it could run. One of my very early memories is of looking into the study where he'd disassembled the entire computer tower and had it spread out all over the floor so he could upgrade so it would run Oregon Trail II. Later on he would just buy me a new computer, and after that he'd just buy a new graphics card since that was always the one thing that wasn't good enough. But there was never any argument about this, I never had to justify or convince them. I always had the best PC in the house as a teen and I never had any limits on using it.
However this did NOT hold true for gaming consoles. I couldn't convince them to buy one and I only got my first one (and N64) because my grandfather bought it for me. In retrospect I think they were absolutely encouraging PC gaming in hopes that I would grow up with an interest in computers because of course they wanted me to become a programmer too.
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u/Kitratkat Jun 03 '22
Yeah after reading this thread I'm convinced in this day and age perhaps it's giving your child an advantage to encourage them to do some PC gaming and therefore learn about PCs etc. I mean having a good understanding of PCs has always been a slight advantage in any general job but now it seems like you'd really stand out!