Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
A recent Wall Street Journal report delves into Gen Z's surprising lack of keyboard typing skills, featuring interviews with several individuals and revealing some startling statistics.
The tech-savvy reputation comes from the "digital native" narrative i.e. because they grew up with computers they must know computers, which is a silly fallacy because how one interacts with technology makes all the difference. It's the same reason why everyone who grew up with electricity isn't necessarily an electrician.
but gen z is not tech savvy. They can use a browser. and watch youtube. They never advance past that stage
Gen X that think Gen Zs are tech savvy are probably the people that the actual Gen X nerds shake their head at when we have to teach them how to put an URL in the address bar instead of searching for Gmail and clicking on the link every. goddamn. time.
Do public schools not teach keyboarding anymore? I ask because I had a keyboarding classe two-hrs 1day per week in grade school plus a full class one year in 7th grade and then again for a full year in high school, and they were always taught by some of the oldest teachers in the school. -My high-school teacher started his career teaching typewriter typing something like three or four decades prior to teaching me in 2004. It seems strange that new young people aren't getting that same basic education.
The physical keyboard is just a tool. There are alternatives like speech-to-text software, virtual keyboards with swipe features, or stenotype.
The goal should be to use whatever is most effective and efficient for yourself, so if Gen Zrs are more used to touch screen, maybe they should invent a touch screen interface that you can use with the computer, maybe even incorporating the mouse somehow.
For me personally the touch interfaces right now are fucked up - I always tap the wrong letters on my phone, the auto-correct and suggestions used to compensate for this often times make it even worse, and swipe doesn't come up with the words I want, I often have to swipe multiple times. I can't imagine operating a computer like this, but maybe for Gen Zrs it's no problem.
Maybe in the future you just need to think the word and it appears on the screen, and typing would be obsolete.
I taught a bunch of Gen Zers back when they were in high school. None of them knew how to type well, and it was a rarity that any of them knew how to type at all. I was supposed to teach them things like Microsoft Office, but we had to start with typing and basic PC usage before we could move on to something as complicated as MS Word.
This is what happens when people don't use computers and instead just use cell phones.
As a Gen X, I think my typing speed peaked around late high school/early university? I tried to teach myself touch typing and got moderately proficient. Then I got into programming where you need to reach all of those punctuation marks. So my right hand has drifted further to the right over the years, which is better for code but suboptimal for regular text.
One thing that's really tanked for me though is writing in cursive. I used to be able to take notes in class as fast as the prof could speak. Now I can scarcely sign my own name.
I mean, as a millennial, I mostly taught myself to type. I'm fast enough, but have bad technique and could be faster. I was only ever actually trained to type in grade school, and barely. Once in a while in computer class we would play an educational typing game.
My mom is much better at typing than I am, because she was trained to type in college. That's not really a thing anymore.
I’m part of Gen Z, and no, we as a generation AREN’T tech savvy. just because we grew up with smart phones does not make us tech savvy. in fact, i actually think it made us dumber with tech. i’m the only one in my school who knows how to use a command line and code (i also use linux as my daily driver). meanwhile everyone else doesn’t even know what a freaking file manager is
Does Gen Z actually have a tech savvy reputation? I was under the impression that the last few generations aren't that great with computers as they more grew up with mature technology. It is the Gen X and Millennials that are more digital native while having used computers where advanced skills were required.
As others highlighted this is not surprising given that Gen Z uses phones a lot more than computers, and writing in one is completely different than in the other.
[Discussion from multiple comments ITT] It's also damn slower to write in a phone screen, simply because it's smaller - you need a bit more precision to hit the keys, and there's no room to use all the fingers (unlike in a physical keyboard).
Swiping helps, but it brings up its own problems - the keyboard application needs to "guess" what you're typing, and correcting mistakes consumes time; you need to look at the word being "guessed" instead of either the keyboard or the text being written, so your accuracy goes down (increasing the odds of wrong "guesses"); and eventually you need to tap write a few words anyway, so you're basically required to type well two ways instead of just one to get any semblance of speed.
so... people who take typing lessons and actively try to improve it have better typing skills than the ones who don't. Shocking.
Tech has evolved to intentionally give less and less choice to the user. Tech skills have declined on average as a result.
I'm the oldest of Gen z (early 1990s). I have two younger siblings who are also Gen Z. Typing was a skill we learned in middleschool/ elementary. When I was about 8, we learned how to use google because it was considered a great resource to find information. By the time my middle sibling was in similar classes, they moved away from Google due to NSFW search results. When my youngest sibling was in school, they worried about shock sites.
They've slowly been removing computers from the school curriculum because of fear of outside forces. That includes typing, sadly. This is all coming from someone who grew up in a Plato self self education plan. (Online, self studies)
The article is kind of all over the place mixing high-school graduates and fourth-graders? I can see how you're sluggish at typing in fourth grade... The numbers for a 17 year old would be interesting... But yeah, 13 words per minute isn't impressive. And most young people I know use phones and tablets, not computers. So naturally a good amount of them isn't good around these things.
My class never had typing classes in school. Our IT lessons were very limited.
My current style is a hybrid of sort of blind typing based on pc gaming (you cant hunt for keys in a match) and looking for keys using about 4-8 fingers.We should ask rookie, because programming skills also sucks lol