#he'd offered it to me before but he called it a chromebook and i was like hellll no why would i want a chromebook but no it runs on windows

[crabs-but-better]

my dad gave me a laptop with an optical drive aaaaaaaa

[theoraclephobetor]

I work in software support at a university, and I promise that this is as systemic a problem as it gets. It doesn't matter where an undergrad is from, ALMOST ALL that I have spoken with have had an incredibly hard time even IMAGINING that basic computer software has capabilities beyond a phone app.

When my office decided to create a free-for-all tech course, we heard a lot of administrators talk about using it to engage retirees and mature students. But most of the support cases that we used to justify the creation of this course were about students 22 AND UNDER.

A 4th year bio major didn't know that she could organize her computer files! An 18 year old 1st year didn't know that he could type a website url into an address bar instead of googling! A GRAD STUDENT didn't know that Word worked differently on computers because she'd only been using it on her phone!!

I taught a kid to right-click today. He was a lifelong Mac & touch-tablet user. He'd been given a cheap chromebook for school, and everyone in his life assumed he'd be fine learning a totally different OS during his first semester at uni. He came to me nearly in tears because he thought he was "too stupid to survive university", and only started to calm down when I started googling how the fuck Mac keyboard commands worked. I don't know if it was seeing me (a "tech person") desperately searching for a Mac/Windows Rosetta stone, or the validation of me calling the Mac/Windows translation process "a pain in the fucking ass", or just that someone was taking him seriously when he said something was hard. Somewhere in there, HE found a youtube channel dedicated to Mac people switching to Windows OS. And suddenly his world had a bit of hope.

But it took this kid a near-breakdown and a last-ditch attempt to ask for help before someone listened. He was about to drop out, or fail multiple courses. He still might for all I know.

And it pisses me off that he thought that the systemic failure of our education systems was an indicator of his own intelligence. Technology is hard, and he deserved to be taught how to use it.

I still remember being in grade 6 and finding out that it was the last year the school district was offering the computer typing course. We - children no older than 13 - knew that it was a bad idea. We told our teachers to fight for the class. But it was cut anyway, and now I help adults a decade younger than me to figure out how to right-click.

I can't help but see the connection.

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.