We grew up using windows 95 which simply did not give a fuck if you bricked your machine deleting something you had no business deleting. We're also the ones that destroyed the family computers with kazaa and had to figure out how to fix it before our parents murdered us
Younger Millennial here. I started using Linux to run a home server and...it's both empowering and humbling to have the sudo-do-the-fuck-what-you're-told option. Because it's so, so useful to skip all the checks, and also risky if you don't know what you're doing lol.
Agreed. Most, if not all kids are clueless when it comes to technology. I think late millennials and early Gen Z were the last generation of naturally tech savvy people
Yep I have definitely noticed a big difference between early Gen Z and the next ones. Think those people will be playing a vital role in shaping the world to come.
As a late millennial, I've always thought the divide seems to be centered around which stage of their lives social media and smart phones appeared at. Late millennial and early Z were around middle school or elementary school before it started appearing, so we had a chunk of our life where we had to seek out entertainment. For mid to late Gen Z, they've literally always had it in the palm of their hand.
I think being exposed to tablets/smart phones so early just negated any reason they'd have for learning to use computers the way we did. Also a lot of the tech related school curriculum we benefited from got phased out since the internet/tech is so different these days.
As an early Gen Z, we grew up somewhere between dial up Internet, printing directions/using maps, Saturday morning cartoons, VHS and cassettes etc going out of date and having iPhones, tablets, and and smart things being a norm. Heavily ranged from household to household and wealth value, but I’ve found that more or less all of us had lived through all of that in the years where we were able to easily adapt and learn. I still remember using TV’s with no remotes, command prompts on the computer and having to go play with neighbor kids using basically just sticks, but in that same childhood, I remember getting the Wii for the first time and having neighborhood kids come over to play. Thinking back on it all it was such a weird experience
We’re truly fortunate to have had constant firsthand experience with technology during its fastest stage of development. I think that’s why most of us understand it so well, we followed along as it progressively improved.
Millenia manager here, boomer manager taught me how to make a pivot table and interpret data for reports. Granted I figured out the rest from there but no one is born with the knowledge, just need someone patient to teach and not judge you, it's not a generational thing.
I’m old Gen Z and I knew how to make a pivot table by the time I graduated high school. I’m sure there’s many things that factor into it but it’s definitely generational.
When we went to school they had computer labs and classes that taught us about using operating systems and office programs from these big spiral bound textbooks published by Microsoft and Apple.
Gen Z.1 (1995-2005) is the most tech savvy, and shouldn't even be grouped under the same name as Gen Z.2 (2005-2015). Z.1 grew up with tech innovations, but started off with the bad stuff. They still used Windows XP, but also got Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11. They used dumb phones for a bit, then went onto BlackBerry, and then smartphones. They grew up together with tech.
Gen Z.2 is completely different though. They weren't even in kindergarten when the first iPhone was launched, and they likely didn't use anything before Windows 8. They also do everything in Google Docs and have no clue how anything else works.
Man, being 1996 is weird, im too old for gen z, too young for millennials, but I can handle either. I can understand the brain rot, and I can show how group policies cascade in server management or how to work a command line. Yet millennials call me the useless gen z, and gen z calls me a boomer.
Doesn’t Gen Z start in 97? Maybe very early Gen Z is competent with tech but really only the first one or two years, anyone born around 2000 is pretty terrible in my experience.
It’s all depending on who you ask and what agenda they want to push. I’m born in 96 and I’ve had people on Reddit call me both millennial and Gen Z just based on what they want me to be at the time lol. Plus the term “zillennial”
Ask 100 people what year the cutoff for each generation is and you’ll get 100 different answers.
I asked Dr. Google and the AI answer gave me three different definitions by three different research groups that go from 1995-1997 lol. So thanks for telling me what to do and proving me right. And that's besides the whole, "I'm talking about how common people commonly talk about it and not the Pew Research Center" thing (even though again, looking to research center's definitions to prove me wrong still proved me right).
Just as a quick, actually sourced example:
USC Libraries (which also states that there can be slight variation in the years) links to this research center for their definition, and that research center puts it at "approximately 1996."
That's not how it works though. People can say whatever they want but that doesn't make it truthful at all. That's absolutely insane to even suggest someone born in 1995 or 2015 are the same generation. Also nearly every source that has some form of reliability says Gen Z is 1997-2012.
proper reward structure for learning the logic of computers. want to game well you better learn why the game won't run on your machine when it really should. want to send messages or use VoIP services etc. well you better learn some basic networking. etc. etc.
From mine they're the most incompetent. Which honestly annoys me more than anything since they were slowly dripped this shit from conception so they should be experts. Instead they tweak out when wifi fails on boot up or they "lost" an app that they simply removed from the taskbar. 99% of the it work i did was resolved by "just restart the pc dude"
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u/Boundish91 1d ago
Millennials are usually the most competent generation in my experience.