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.
Duh. They use phones mostly. A lot of the gen z people I know are just as bad as boomers with tech. Millennials and gen x had that sweet spot of “actually having to learn how shit works not just iphone go brrr.”
Yeah I don’t know why the article mentions Gen Z’s “tech-savvy reputation”. Being able to operate a cell phone doesn’t make you tech savvy.
Gen X and Millennials grew up using command line and troubleshooting computer problems before the Internet. Their tech skills are way higher than Gen Z.
I’m thankful my father was so insistent on teaching me to type properly. At the time I was super annoyed at him putting a cardboard cutout over the keyboard so I couldn’t see keys. But touch typing has been a boon ever since, I doubt dad was prepping me for typing quickly mid-game but it sure is nice!
Yep. And phone typing is the ‘hunt and peck’ method of keyboard typing. Which is unfortunate because it’s ingraining the slowest way to type onto a whole generation.
any good IRC servers left or did it all move to discord? Ive been meaning to get on an IRC server thats not just a mirror of the in-game chat of the game I play.
Gen Z here, most of my online life is on IRC. Learned about its existence a couple years ago. It is very much alive, although most people left there are at least semi-technical, and I miss the non-technical crowd.
A swiping motion and muscle memory for tapping are two different things. It took a while to get fast with my thumbs even though I type fairly fast on a keyboard.
There’s a mode where you swipe your finger over each letter in order and it auto completes the word. Not sure how often younger people use it (though I wasn’t aware you could do that until I saw someone younger doing it).
No it’s actually way faster. You can swipe whole words in less than a second. It’s like writing with pen and paper but each letter is actually a whole word.
Agreed, it’s pretty great. And while the computer sometimes misunderstands what you swipe, it will show you potential alternatives you can tap on. Like in this screenshot:
One difference is that the touch-screen typists rely heavily on autocorrect. I don’t think they’re actually as accurate as you think - their spelling and typo errors are being covered up more than yours on the desktop computer.
Duh. They use phones mostly. A lot of the gen z people I know are just as bad as boomers with tech. Millennials and gen x had that sweet spot of “actually having to learn how shit works not just iphone go brrr.”
Yeah I don’t know why the article mentions Gen Z’s “tech-savvy reputation”. Being able to operate a cell phone doesn’t make you tech savvy.
Gen X and Millennials grew up using command line and troubleshooting computer problems before the Internet. Their tech skills are way higher than Gen Z.
I never needed to use command line, but I did hone my typing skills on MIRC and ICQ.
*Mavis Beacon.
Anyone responsible for the family IT services had to learn cmd.
Also, the article reminds me of this
I’m thankful my father was so insistent on teaching me to type properly. At the time I was super annoyed at him putting a cardboard cutout over the keyboard so I couldn’t see keys. But touch typing has been a boon ever since, I doubt dad was prepping me for typing quickly mid-game but it sure is nice!
My dad was similar. Guess thats a good thing looking back. I’m going to teach my kid pivot tables so they can rule the world.
I learned mine playing a MUD
You typed fast or you died.
For me it was WoW back when it was more social and you had to communicate via text mid fights and whatnot
Definitely RuneScape that did it for me
What about cl_gibcount 1000 in half life.
This is why I feel disconnected from most of my gen z people
it does, to a boomer
Yep. And phone typing is the ‘hunt and peck’ method of keyboard typing. Which is unfortunate because it’s ingraining the slowest way to type onto a whole generation.
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Autocorrect begs to differ, usually only when the word is out of my field of vision.
I took typing, on typewriters, but got efficient years later on IRC and ICQ. 60+more wpm. I’m still fairly proficient on a familiar KB too.
any good IRC servers left or did it all move to discord? Ive been meaning to get on an IRC server thats not just a mirror of the in-game chat of the game I play.
Gen Z here, most of my online life is on IRC. Learned about its existence a couple years ago. It is very much alive, although most people left there are at least semi-technical, and I miss the non-technical crowd.
I don’t know, it was a very long time ago. Maybe do a search, based on your interests?
Slashnet still exists and it’s fairly active depending on the channel. #xkcd was bumping last time I checked my client.
Libera is quite active
Tried using swipe typing before and honestly I’m just faster typing normally.
Yeah, autocorrect is bad enough without the extra emphasis on it with swipe.
It’s vastly better when you need to type with one hand
True, but otherwise I just type faster normally.
It works well for casual conversation. But if you’re trying to have a technical conversation it will fail on uncommon or custom words or phrases.
Can confirm, it’s worth the effort.
Yeah, I’m a swiper myself and I can’t imagine anyone being able to swipe without knowing the keyboard layout like one would for typing.
A swiping motion and muscle memory for tapping are two different things. It took a while to get fast with my thumbs even though I type fairly fast on a keyboard.
There’s a mode where you swipe your finger over each letter in order and it auto completes the word. Not sure how often younger people use it (though I wasn’t aware you could do that until I saw someone younger doing it).
Sounds like predictive T9 but slower
T9 was supreme.
No it’s actually way faster. You can swipe whole words in less than a second. It’s like writing with pen and paper but each letter is actually a whole word.
Agreed, it’s pretty great. And while the computer sometimes misunderstands what you swipe, it will show you potential alternatives you can tap on. Like in this screenshot:
They also stopped teaching typing in schools. My younger family members never had an computer class or a typing class.
Anything beyond ~2002 became worse than the predecessor in IT related tasks.
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One difference is that the touch-screen typists rely heavily on autocorrect. I don’t think they’re actually as accurate as you think - their spelling and typo errors are being covered up more than yours on the desktop computer.