Not to mention the internet moves so fast you can become illiterate again.
I bet most internet users have never tried VR, crypto currencies or ChatGPT yet. Some new things will come. Some will even stick for the long run. And inertia means illiteracy will rise.
No to mentions as the old people die, new kids are born in countries were internet is not widespread yet.
After all, some parts of the world still don't have electricity.
> I bet most internet users have never tried VR, crypto currencies or ChatGPT yet.
I’ve tried none of those things and I’ve been on the internet since the last century.
Don’t feel like I’m missing out just like I don’t miss trying to figure out how to do anything useful with gopher over some crazy convoluted connection that required a 20 page pamphlet to set up.
What I try to remember though is I felt that way about everything, initially:) . My wife didn't miss or need a second monitor for our first five years together - and then she finally tried it and she cannot imagine living without one now. She fought me on Netflix as cable already had so many channels she didn't need anything more (same results once she tried it:) . I fought my best friend on vr for 2 years until he practically locked me in his basement and stuck oculus on my head and now I feel stupid for not trying sabre beat or boxing apps sooner :).
Not everything will work that way. But "I don't currently need" is not always a good / sufficient dismissal of something new.
To the original point - I do not have crypto tiktok discord tor snapchat etc... And may indeed be considered illiterate to some, even though I too have been on them intertubes for 3 decades and make my living in IT:). It was a point of pride for people I knew in 90s and 2000s to not have tried interwebs.
(I've tried chatgpt though and find it massively useful for learning!)
people who grew up with phones as the primary computing device are more tech illiterate than those who started with desktop machines. they're inherently locked down, meant for consuming not producing. they're harder to customize, harder to do things in nonstandard ways, harder to learn how they work.
e.g. hierarchical filesystems are gradually becoming esoteric knowledge for zoomers because of how much phones and always-online apps obscure it from the user.
You think young people are tech literate? They are iPhone literate but they would be hard pressed trying to do literally anything on a computer beside opening Chrome and launching YouTube.
Now that the elderly are leaving the internet, the chance of finding somebody who randomly follows instructions will make this malware trend vanish imho
/e:
apparently this is more true for Europe than it is for other locations. I mean come on, its two clicks more which you usually do once for a website. And we also had every news station explain to you why the GDPR is a good thing and a big deal.
Watch people under 30 use computers. They are just as likely to have a million newsletter subscriptions, and to click whatever makes the cookie banner disappear. HN is not a representative sample of the current generation.
I stopped expecting a demographic change as the boomers age when I looked at the demographics of gen Z and younger. The population “drop” doesn’t look so significant.
Meanwhile intelligence/knowledge will always be a rarer feature in the population. There’s just more to do in a day and no one picks the same hobbies.
