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Comment by wxnx | Hacker News Reader

A significant portion of the US is illiterate [1]. One might assume that being illiterate affects internet usage. Not quite as romantic as neo-Luddism, or even making a conscious choice not to expose oneself to potentially problematic patterns of communication.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

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I think a lot of people are surprised by statistics like “x% of people don’t [thing every modestly privileged person does]” because it’s easy to forget that society has a lot of fringes if you’re not regularly exposed to them.

My first reaction was “7% sounds low”, but again, that’s probably biased by my own experiences.

> My first reaction was “7% sounds low”, but again, that’s probably biased by my own experiences.

That was my reaction as well, particularly based on how the question was asked - it was very specifically about the Internet, not mentioning specific services that someone with low technological literacy might not associate with Internet usage (e.g. Google Maps, or Facebook Messenger) [1].

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Non-i...

Even then, I'd consider someone using Google Maps or Facebook Messenger to have moderate technical literacy, decent regular literacy, and a better-than-worst financial situation.

Quite right, poor choice of phrase on my part.

My point was that there are people who are e.g. legitimately surprised when their high-speed data connection drops and it prevents them from using Google Maps on their smartphone. To them, it's functionally a GPS, not Internet-based at all. Similarly for certain messaging apps, which integrate with the phone's OS so tightly that it's not apparent that they're using Internet-based communication vs. SMS.

My larger point was that to then expect all respondents to a phone survey (on a measurement significantly linked to technical literacy, no less) to make similar distinctions unprompted is perhaps a bit of reach.

I sometimes wonder how much illiteracy or lack of vocabulary and comprehension skills has to do with popularity of Instagram and tiktok and the videos that people make of themselves talking to the camera.

Also for people only fluent in languages that aren’t popular online. My parents aren’t able to parse most online English discussion, and I’m sure it’s tiring to try to understand just like it would be if I tried a deep conversation in their language, so they like WhatsApp video forwards and YouTube. Unfortunately, that content is mostly garbage.

> I sometimes wonder how much illiteracy ... Instagram and tiktok ... themselves talking to the camera.

I bet it's near 0%. That looks more like a lack of enjoyment of reading if anything.

How is it so high? Are these people immigrants from developing nations or something?

From the https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp link - "U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United States."

They were talking about illiteracy. The "low literacy" stat is dominated by people at level 1, which is not illiterate.

I don't think its any more likely for an illiterate person to pass through the immigration system than it is for same person to get AWS certification.

Most of the immigrants in the US are not authorized to be here.

I don't think that that is the case. This[0] seems to suggest that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are here legally.

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/12/how-pew-res...

In what fantasy universe?

In reality, there are about 44 million documented immigrants in the United States. The number of undocumented immigrants is a fraction of that.

It's most likely a factor. It's also not too obvious whether those numbers are high compared to any other country, because it's one of those things that every country has its' own unique standards and methodology for measuring. For instance you might think that North Korea is the gold standard of literacy, at 100%, or you might think that they likely have some serious issues with the methodology they use for measuring that.

Well we certainly added to that number with many districts refusing to return to class even when the science proved it was safe and the concerns being bandied about were not supported by any research.

The real danger not mentioned in the article is how many of that seven percent have students in school districts that were not offering classroom education?

We have areas of the country, mostly serving minority students, who have irreparably harmed their chances because politics trumped science.

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n521

https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

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