https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/326747189/nfab061...
Computer use has actually declined since ~ 2013?! Wow. That's actually kind of sad.
These differences of course are superficial and your phone could be used as a computer. It’s an arbitrary category like most categorizations that we make. I think the important distinction is that smart devices are largely content consumption devices vs computers being relegated to content creation. For example, would you say that someone who’s used a SmartTV has used a computer just because the specs are largely the same?
I think you should fully expect computer use to decline over time because most people consume rather than create content.
[1] I find the overlap goes the other way: I'm using a laptop to write this, but I could have done so with my phone. Laptops and desktops are being used like smartphones.
As I said, the categorization is completely arbitrary and depends on how you choose to draw the lines, but neither categorization is right/wrong.
In other words, nitpicking pedantry, but nothing that should meaningfully shift the overall numbers. Same reason that you wouldn’t expect to include SmartTVs on this even though they’re all running Android.
If you strip away that residue I would suspect that the number of true computer literate people has increased steadily since the PC revolution.
As such, I think computer literacy has probably dropped over the last 9 years as fewer people get started. Which in general isn’t a bad thing compare the number of people who know how to do even basic car repair in 2022 vs 1960.
Phones "just work" but phone screens are too small and touch keyboards too imprecise to do any long-form typing on it. I think the adoption of the phone as the most popular interface for the web has made the quality of software interfaces decline, and has made things like forums less mainstream, both of which are a shame.
So, it's more of the same, computer use is dwindling and so is general computer literacy. e.g. Ask what a file is, or a directory and majority of iphone users have no idea! Permissions too!
I find it so exciting, I read about this a while back, e.g. 2015, for user experiences and literacy and back then were reports that the entry curve for computers has been removed via cell phones (iphones, androids, e.g. general smartphones.) that daily computing difficulties do not present themselves as they used too (and they still exist.) from virus, malware, to sorting files, organization, search, and general software competency like excel and such.
But ask about social media apps and how they work - and there you go (which, ironically suffer the same issues on purpose, how do you sort information, organize new content or higher fruitful content, etc.)
There's also the fun part of addiction and dopamine feedback loops, but I'm getting a bit off the track here. :)
As someone that grew up with Win 95, this is a revolution in the way computing works. In the era I entered into computing, to use a computer really did often require at least a little knowledge of DOS or the commandline. Absolutely it required you to know how files and folders worked.
Viruses were super common and super easy to catch as we started entering the internet era. So part of correctly operating a computer involved picking and maintaining the right AV software.
That's a barrier that has kept people out of computing in general.
Now, everyone's grandma is on facebook (for better or worse). Everyone knows how to use a search engine. Even those that don't know how to use a search engine, know how to do "Siri: What is the capital of Kansas?". Knowledge is hyper accessible. (This also exposes new epistemological issues. How can we verify something is true when it requires hours of research, even with the internet?)
It is not a benefit, but just the realization curve that the more you make things easy, it can appear to be a step forward but instead become many steps back.
The whole reason I entered into this field, was because I could not get my computer to work, or that I didn't understand it - probably both, and it drove me to overcome those barriers. I was of course a kid, and the computer itself has entertained me and gave me decision paths that I would've never known possible without it.
It really is sad, those experiences seem gone to the sands of time and if a device doesn't work properly, then it's not per se the customer or audience, but an user experience flaw.
I have bad news for you if you think normal computer users were mostly good at understanding or explaining these things in the 90s or 2000s or whatever.
That said, I think the the term 'computer literate' is much less defined than 'literate', so using the term is a good way to start an argument.
My experience has been that outside of enthusiast or professional tech circles, and those directly adjacent, knowing stuff like where to expect a USB disk to appear when it's plugged in, or that you can cut/copy/paste files, what you can and can't drag-n-drop, where to expect common actions to show up in menus, the concept of UI focus and how it basically works in practice, and so on, places you in the (lower end of) top-tier of computer users, and pretty much always has. People, in general, have never understood how to use a computer well. We've had the term "power user" for folks who halfway know how to use a computer for decades now, because even most people who work with a desktop every day do not know that, and it's not like that was different pre-smartphone.
Either simple, ordinary GUI computer use is actually much harder than we (on a site like this) think, or the UIs and metaphors we use are flat-out awful and need to be re-thought from the ground up (what might that look like? Well, iOS has tried...). Or some combination of the two.
[EDIT] My point about the definition of "computer literate" hardly mattering is that I think you have to stretch it so far that it becomes useless before you manage to capture most computer users, since at least when they became common in offices. You have to put the bar practically on the floor before most users will pass it. I don't (entirely) blame users for that, to be clear, and think it has a lot to do with fundamental mistakes in how our profession and industry build & present UIs to ordinary folks who don't want to devote half their brain to understanding how computers work. It has very little to do with iPhones.