The smart phone generation seem to have lower computer literacy than millennials largely due to smart phones hiding away a lot of the workings. In the UK age verification for adult sites came into force yesterday and like everywhere streaming services are getting very enshittified. This is going to lead kids to discovering tor, VPNs, pirating, how to make deep fakes (to fool ai based age verification), and other ways of getting what they want without restrictions.
We can all hope, but that may not happen
Disagree. That’ll only make kids look for the next easiest solution. Tor? VPN? Too complicated. Just join a telegram chat group, done. Piracy and porn galore (plus fuckloads of ads, piracy for sale and scams). They’ll only use AI to make porn of girls in their classes
I disagree, Microsoft’s enshittification of windows with win 8 led me to learn Linux. From there I’ve learned more about computing, self hosting, and networking than I ever had an interest in before. What I’m saying is give it time, nobody is going to be hackerman on day one of this law being enforced.
When was it decided that parents can do absolutely nothing wrong regarding their kids so that intrusive bullshit like this had to be introduced? Who in their right mind would upload their ID or face pic to some rando porn site to verify an age? It’s like Internet Security 101 to not do that ever.
I had a sour taste in my mouth when signing Stop Killing Games because it required my full legal name and address even tho I understand that they need to verify my eligibility to vote and I trust them way more than I trust a for-profit porn site. It’s just not something I usually do on principle.
Who in their right mind would upload their ID or face pic to some rando porn site to verify an age? It’s like Internet Security 101 to not do that ever.
That’s the point. They’re not trying to “protect the kids”. They’re trying to kill porn by making it more cumbersome and uncomfortable for you to do.
Aren’t there like 1000s of Russian porn sites that dgaf who you are or where you are? (And probably install malware.) Are all UK ISPs going to find them all and block them all one by one or how is that supposed to work if the site itself doesn’t geo block?
Next step: the great wall of great britain. Protecting citizens from harmful foreign influences.
Hadrian’s firewall
Yeah the Act shows the wilful stupidity of politicians who pass legislation without understanding the areas they’re legislating on. It’s a nonsense act that tries to look like it is “protecting children” and is performative nonsense for MPs to pass moral judgement on things they don’t agree with.
But in practice it’s a security and privacy nightmare, it’s restricting and interfering in the freedom and rights of the majority of the population all to satisfy a stupid moral panic, and it makes the UK look like a backwards state.
it makes the UK look like a backwards state.
Don’t worry, soon other countries will be down there with the UK. Look at the payment processor (Visa/MC/etc) issues recently with sexually explicit games on Steam and itch.io.
It isn’t about protecting children. It’s about exploiting adults.
A majority of people, both children and adults, will successfully be exploited by this. Even if it is eventually repealed (which is unlikely, there are businesses set up dependent on this - we can’t deny investors their profits!), it’s already happening now.
This is probably a great time to invest in these businesses. Not that I would, out of principle, but it’s pretty obvious they’re going to make bank.
This is probably a great time to invest in these businesses.
Palantir is already at a 600 p/e. Similar AI / Data security companies have valuations in the hundreds. The whole tech sector is a bloated pustule waiting for revenue growth that’s beyond speculative. You’re going fishing in a shark tank.
Invest at your own risk.
Gen X would have had to program everything themselves at one point, because there was no internet and no portable storage media, so when you got a game or program at a store, it was the source code and you had to type it all in, and possibly fix bugs and errors along the way.
Gen X would have had to program everything themselves at one point
It wasn’t everyone in the entire generational cohort working from first principles to build a massive network. You’re describing a tiny fraction of the modern tech sector doing work that was far more electrical than comp sci within a sector that was primarily academic and heavy industrial.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Gen X cohort was still learning to use slide rules and practice pre-Excel accounting standards, when they weren’t just… pouring concrete or welding car parts or cleaning out chemical drums with pressure hoses.
You’re describing a career path that was in the low hundred thousands back in the 1990s, which has swelled to the millions in the 2020s. And even then, we’re talking about a workforce in the hundreds of millions. The vast majority of Americans have never been techies and never will be.
I’m talking about home computing; not even for jobs.
We had portable storage. Magnetic tape and paper. Floppy and hard drives existed but were gor the most part out of the reach for consumers
I understand however the c64 usually had a floppy when bought in the states
Spending 7 hours copying code from a magazine only to find you did a dumb on line 538 was a magical experience
Beginning of genx is close or a few years after beginning of internet.
It wasn’t something Joe Random could use even decade or two after, but just mentioning for correct perspective.
That is technically true. It would be more accurate to say world wide web didn’t exist.
I remember typing in BASIC programs for my commodore from a magazine. It actually did teach me quite a bit about coding.
Born between '65 and '80? I’m from the lower half of that age bracket and I never did that even once. Knowing the magic incantations to load the game from tape to memory, yes.
Typing in was never “a thing” in the sense that yes, people did it, magazines had these pages of code, but there have been popular consumer friendly ways to load software right from the start. The start being the start of mass adoption of home computers.
I’m a millennial and I did it more than once on hardware older than I was, but because I wanted to, not because there were no other options.
load “jumpman”, 8, 1
Press play on tape…
Training to accept the taste of leather.
We owe it to youth to stop this, not see training opportunities like Americans do their slaves.
I love how your comment negatively depicts Americans as enslavers while simultaneously portrays everyone else as victims of their government.
seems pretty racist to me.
Umm. What? I can’t fault your optimism, but… No. Like, really. Not a snowball’s chance in hell levels of nope.
Kids are far more likely to assume a fully enshittified experience is “just how it is”. I don’t see any logical path that would support your predicted outcome. Increasing the barrier to entity isn’t just gonna magically change their minds and make them spontaneously hop the fence. That path is even more of a pain in the ass. , and they were already just using what’s shoved in getting of them. If it’s already not worth their time to do different, why would making it seem even less attractive help?
Not to mention that the computer literacy of the youngest generation will literally never be on par with the youngest millennials. I started using windows OS at like 4 years old on windows 95. My first computer classes in school started when I was 6. We had years and years of just typing classes on those dummy keyboards that werent even computers. WPM was an actual marketable skill at that time that they wanted to impart on kids.
Basically younger millennials have been cemented as the most technologically literate people alive. Most of the younger generation have the same level of computer literacy as boomers and are even worse than most Gen X. Far less capable than even elder millennials. We had actual QWERTY keyboards by the time we had cellphones, so we never were part of the T9 goofiness either
Nothing is going to catch up the young adults who grew up as IPad kids, because for those of us a bit older we have been exercising actual computer skills basically since we popped out
You mean older millennials, which is too say, those who were born earlier.
As an elder millennial, I believe we are far more computer literate than young millennials.
As a 90’s kid, I think we’re roughly on-par.
I grew up with Windows (95, then 98), DOS, MacOS 8, 9, and X, and used several Apple II computers at school. I was able to use dial-up on my own by like 7?
Built my first custom gaming PC at 12 or maybe 13. It ran XP, which needed a bit of tweaking to run some of my old DOS games.
Man, I do not miss dealing with Sound Blaster drivers.
The phrase “IRQ in use” is still enough to give me nightmares.
Yeah, changing IRQ addresses for peripherals until everything worked wad fun. /s
Also, some people thought it was black magic that I could hex edit a program’s executable to change it from English to Portuguese.
Oh boy, sound blaster. As much of a pain getting everything to work back in the day was, I’m also nostalgic for it.
Anyway, generational lines are always blurry. I always find myself identifying with things defined to be part of the generation before or after mine anyway. I would call myself a “90s kid”, being born in the 80s, but I count that as an older millennial.
We got our first family computer when I was in grade school. It didn’t even have Windows, just DOS. So I first learned the command line. When we later got Windows 3.1, we didn’t have a mouse, so I learned to navigate the OS with keyboard only (to this day I have a preference for keyboard navigation). By the time I was in high school I knew how to code, build a computer from parts, etc. And started my life as a pirate with Napster.
My sister is a younger millennial, born in the 90s. By the time she was actively using a computer I think it was probably on XP. She probably wouldn’t know what defragmenting is or how to format a drive. But she didn’t have to learn that stuff.
As a millennial in general it seems we are the only generation who know how computers work as a rule. We had to help our grandparents and parents generation with every technical problem, and figured the kids of the future would surpass us. But now I have play the same tech support role for my kids generation, because they never learned that stuff either.
Oh boy, sound blaster. As much of a pain getting everything to work back in the day was, I’m also nostalgic for it.
I am too. I ran across a yt vid the other day talking about how in the DOS games era apparently there was something called the MT-32, which cost around the equivalent of $2000 USD, but the sound was amazing. Instead of the tinnier output of sound blaster, some DOS games actually had full music tracks in their games.
Still though, think of how much less memorable that sound would be if we didn’t have it.
He goes through and compares PC speaker, Sound Blaster, and MT-32 for a bunch of games like King’s Quest IV, Monkey Island, Space Quest 3, one of the Leisure Suit Larrys, and even an Indy Jones game.
Yeah I think the person you are replying to is somewhat confused. As a younger gen x on the cusp, all of my grade school friends (even those who would not later go into tech) knew how to disassemble and reassemble a PC. We had to scrounge for graphics cards, sound cards, hard drives, peripherals, use DOS. Install drivers. Dialed into BBS’s. Pirated software. We built that campy Web 1.0 shit in the 90s.
I dont understand your qwerty coment I have never seen a device that could be called a computer that didn’t have one. Unless you go as far back as the “mini computers” and even some of those had them
I believe that was in relation to phones–they said they never had to use T9 mode on phones that had only numbers, and went straight to qwerty phones.
Thanks. I knew i was missing something
I don’t think they are as stupid as you think them.
I mean, back when I was younger I learned pretty much all I know about IT by admining my own computer, and I pretty much did it by trial and error yes. However nowadays kids talk to each other over popular chat applications, eventually one tells another “hey just install this browser/vpn” the same way they install mods for their videogames.
Tho in the end I don’t think they will become techy savy tho, I guess just that tor and VPNs will become commonplace in UK.
Meanwhile the old boomers are the ones who are going to forced to shrug “just how it is”.
Hormones and porn addiction. You think a 16 year old who’s been watching porn for years is going to give it up over night?
That’s a very specific age that might try to seek it out. But what about a 10 year old who never experienced it and grows up thinking that’s just the way it is?
You’re talking to someone who would steal the sears catalog (like printed catalog - showed up in an actual physical mailbox) and page through the lingerie ads. You think a hormone driven teenager needs Pornhub?
Just saying…
When you’ve tasted wine, would you go back to vinegar though?
Oh, you sweet summer child. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
The world has changed. I don’t think the lads mags of old or going to the one corner shop where you knew they weren’t going to bother checking your ID for a top shelf mag is going to cut it with teens who are used to 10 monster cocks gangbang pawg.
Do they even have porn mags anymore? Seems like you’d have to go to a special collectors shop or something to find them, if they exist.
Still a thriving market here. Some people might have to travel a bit though.
2 words. PORN MAGAZINES
return 2 the bush
I doubt that. As long as social media algorithms can capture the attention of children, most won’t bother with learning more about computers.
The reason previous generations did, was because there weren’t so many ways to distract yourself. To play games on the first computer I had access to I had to use DOS. There was no way around it. Now people don’t, so they won’t.
deleted by creator
https://www.edweek.org/technology/u-s-students-computer-literacy-performance-drops/2024/12
It is difficult to find data comparing Gen alpha/“smartphone generation” to other generations, largely because definitions of computer literacy and methods for assessing it have not remained stable on that time scale in the face of evolving technology
“please provide evidence that people who are abstracted from their operating system have less knowledge of how an operating system works”
There ya go. I summarized your post for you.
