What’s the cutoff year for this mindset? Granted, I’m an electrical engineer, but I was born in the early 2000s, and my friends had a solid grasp of computer software and hardware fundamentals.
It’s not an age thing so much as an “amount of interest” thing. The barriers to entry are constantly being lowered, so it takes less skill and investment to get involved in things.
It’s one thing to download a free trial of something like photoshop, it’s another thing to spend years using it to the point where you understand the full capabilities of what you can do with it.
As you get older you’ll see things that used to require a lot of effort to get into become easier and easier to access. It’s the march of technological progress, and it might make you feel like it’s devaluing the things you used to value. And then you’ll understand why your grandparents were always going on about “Back in my day…”
part of it is down to exposure as well, if you grow up in a place where you can’t just buy the latest iphone every year it’s a lot more likely that you’ll end up fiddling around with stuff and learn how it works.
like india has a lot of this, people can’t afford a new device but it’s not that difficult to get some “e-waste” which is still perfectly functional (if slow), so kids are way more likely to end up fiddling around and learning.
I had restrictive parents who wanted to investigate and limit every part of my digital life, so most of my motivation came from getting the most out of the devices I could access. Usually that involved manipulating software to break parental digital locks, or to install more featured homebrew to access websites (and emulators).
Financially, my folks could have gotten me what I wanted out of my tech, but tried to hold me back because of their personal views. That was what drove me to get creative and understand more about all my devices.
If were to have kids my plan is to start by locking down my kid’s devices in increasingly stronger ways as they learn new workarounds. Just for this reason.
That doesnt work with all kids, my nephew gives up instantly when theres a technical barrier as simple as picking the correct video cable out of a pile of cables and just accepts that its beyond his ability.
Can I ask how old he is? I was doing that when I was like 5 or 6. But I was born in the '80s so I had a parent that could teach me and let me figure out the rest as it came. Also helped we had color-coded RCA jacks and I could reach magazines and manuals by the time s-video was common enough.
14 or 15. He has really bad ADHD, even his distractions get cut off by other distractions until he is overwhelmed and then just incapable of the effort of figuring out why the DP he is trying to plug into an HDMI slot is “too small”.
Ah. Well, we had those types too back in the day. Hopefully he gets the help he needs. If not then there’s still a chance his motivation will overcome his diagnosis, but I’m not a childhood ADHD expert. I only work with adults for their meds and such.
What’s the cutoff year for this mindset? Granted, I’m an electrical engineer, but I was born in the early 2000s, and my friends had a solid grasp of computer software and hardware fundamentals.
It’s not an age thing so much as an “amount of interest” thing. The barriers to entry are constantly being lowered, so it takes less skill and investment to get involved in things.
It’s one thing to download a free trial of something like photoshop, it’s another thing to spend years using it to the point where you understand the full capabilities of what you can do with it.
As you get older you’ll see things that used to require a lot of effort to get into become easier and easier to access. It’s the march of technological progress, and it might make you feel like it’s devaluing the things you used to value. And then you’ll understand why your grandparents were always going on about “Back in my day…”
part of it is down to exposure as well, if you grow up in a place where you can’t just buy the latest iphone every year it’s a lot more likely that you’ll end up fiddling around with stuff and learn how it works.
like india has a lot of this, people can’t afford a new device but it’s not that difficult to get some “e-waste” which is still perfectly functional (if slow), so kids are way more likely to end up fiddling around and learning.
I had restrictive parents who wanted to investigate and limit every part of my digital life, so most of my motivation came from getting the most out of the devices I could access. Usually that involved manipulating software to break parental digital locks, or to install more featured homebrew to access websites (and emulators).
Financially, my folks could have gotten me what I wanted out of my tech, but tried to hold me back because of their personal views. That was what drove me to get creative and understand more about all my devices.
If were to have kids my plan is to start by locking down my kid’s devices in increasingly stronger ways as they learn new workarounds. Just for this reason.
That doesnt work with all kids, my nephew gives up instantly when theres a technical barrier as simple as picking the correct video cable out of a pile of cables and just accepts that its beyond his ability.
Can I ask how old he is? I was doing that when I was like 5 or 6. But I was born in the '80s so I had a parent that could teach me and let me figure out the rest as it came. Also helped we had color-coded RCA jacks and I could reach magazines and manuals by the time s-video was common enough.
14 or 15. He has really bad ADHD, even his distractions get cut off by other distractions until he is overwhelmed and then just incapable of the effort of figuring out why the DP he is trying to plug into an HDMI slot is “too small”.
Ah. Well, we had those types too back in the day. Hopefully he gets the help he needs. If not then there’s still a chance his motivation will overcome his diagnosis, but I’m not a childhood ADHD expert. I only work with adults for their meds and such.
It’s a dangerous bet - there were times where I was at the “despair resulting from failed desperation” point.
Yeah, I would wager that this is not really a generational thing (or at least, not a cutoff between millennials and gen z).
I’m a millennial and I guarantee there are plenty of people my age who would have no idea what op’s question means…