I remember when I was little I figured out how to use the VHS to set timers record shows etc, I think making things difficult is useful, it forces some learning to get a 'reward'.
A lot of comments seem to think that millenials or younger don't have an interest in technology, but I think that's only because they see their older peers or family members perfectly fine with a dumbed down interface to get their needs taken care of.
As a 45 year old, that got started with computers at 2 years old watching and playing around with games my dad would write on an Atari 800XE/XL system, my 13 year old son gets all of the touch interfaces, but also picked up a serious interest in tech from watching me. I didn't want to push him into software, wanting him to find his own way with his interests, but in the last year he has shown an interest in figuring out what is behind all those touch interfaces and websites that just do things "automatically."
I had taking apart crystal radios and learning to put multiple viruses on the family computer to have them fight for the "ultimate" virus as my learning experience. I think curiosity is learned, and even encouraging things outside of technology can lead into technology or science/math/problem solving. Younger generations are just as hungry for knowledge, we just have hidden it away, and need to give them a peek behind the scenes.
After this post, perhaps tech for kids need to be difficult to encourage learning.
In the most advanced version I had it read letters to read a word aloud (eg, a spelling tool). All so I could reenact the scene from Sneakers where they rearrange Scrabble tiles from SETEC ASTRONOMY to TOO MANY SECRETS :)
I found the same growing up. But at the time (the 90s) there weren't hyperstimuli available in the form of smartphones, streaming services, or engagement-optimized algorithmic content feeds. The broadcast television that was available was often boring, or at least poorly matched to any given person's interests at a given time. We didn't have a game console at home either, so getting a game to work meant installing it on the family computer, and maybe troubleshooting problems myself.
I don't know that I'd have learned as much as I did about computers at that age if such hyper-optimized things had been available to me as a kid. And I think their availability today proves that any notion of "digital natives" was a fallacy. The generation below me (Gen-Z, Zoomers?) seem to be experts at using touchscreen devices and social networks. Some of them are even flocking to text based AI games that seem intriguing. But they see computers largely as fixed appliances, and most give up pretty quickly when a computer malfunctions (whether it comes in the form of a phone, laptop, tablet, television, or something else).
I now deliberately work to banish (and keep banished) as much of that algorithmically optimized hyperreality as possible out of my home and life. I feel much better without it, and always have. But I also think it's a good practice to get used to so that, if I ever have kids, it'll be the norm I pass on to their daily lives. Your first computer should require some assembly and tinkering, and digital activities which are really just skinner boxes created as lures by some or other corporation shouldn't be available to compete with more difficult, more rewarding pursuits.
And, importantly, it's not that they learned the new tech fluently while millennials haven't adapted—there aren't "modern" digital skills that aren't readily learned by millennials, but there certainly are fewer Gen Z adults who have learned to fluently use the still-more-powerful keyboard-based tech that we picked up as kids.
As an adult I find it strange how nontechnical so many people are. I really am concerned for them in the future as AI and scams get so much better and much more complex.
I agree, but it's so much more than keyboards.
Things that irritated me for years about smartphones were irritations because I'd been able to do them on desktops and laptops but suddenly couldn't on a smartphone. I knew that the hardware qualified it as a general purpose computer, and that it was locked down into being a more limited appliance. Features were added back over the years, and there's even an argument that we normalized much better security practices on both iOS and Android/AOSP because of that development cadence but, for most people whose first computer was a phone, the concept of a general purpose computer is simply missing from their awareness and "computer" becomes merely a word meaning black-box, magical appliance. And they don't discover what the appliance truly could be---its full potential---because it now works well enough for its specific purpose that they can leave the black box closed.
It may be a historically inevitable closing of doors, in the same way that cars stopped being machines most people understood long before the advent of the microcomputer, but I feel a sense of loss for other people. My reading of human history is that when there's a rough technological parity (i.e. parity of understanding, access, and usefulness) between individuals and large institutions, you tend to see more freedom. When there isn't, you see less-to-none.
Although time is ticking and I be we'll soon have the influence from 'peer pressure' - we're getting our daughter prepped for secondary/high school next year so she's got an old iPhone to play around with but thankfully she has zero interest in tech as a distraction. She sends a message to her friends every now and then, she watches some tutorials on Youtube for the piano, and of course some cat videos. My bigger worry is that she is going to bankrupt me from books... she's reading a new one every other week and has a real attachment to them so I can't persuade her to go to the local library...
As for books, I've fallen in love with my Kobo Clara e-reader. It can run side-loaded software like Plato or KOReader, and I've loaded it with just about everything from https://standardebooks.org/. Maybe get your daughter an e-reader (Kobo or other model) for Christmas, paired with a monthly budget/stipend for books that she chooses how to spend?
At the same age, I read a ton, and I unfortunately got into fiction in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Those books were WAY too overpriced, simply for using the D&D properties in their naming and stories. The books I felt were excellent, but the authors could have replaced names with something generic, and they would have been just as captivating. Having an e-reader would have made those costs far less painful, and I probably would have read at least twice as many books. I imagine if the books aren't highly trademarked or being made into movies, now you could probably get 3 times the number of e-books for the cost of a physical book.
Alternatively, take her to second hand book fairs and stimulate bargain book hunting in charity shops.
Pet theory: This perception is largely from their confidence in messing around until something works, which has only a loose connection to the operator's competence.
Younger generations have grown up with devices that are (A) more idiot-proofed and (B) cheaper and easier to replace and (C) less supervision when using it. This leads to a different way of approaching the problem, which may be more-effective but isn't necessarily more-knowledgeable.
In contrast, older generations who grew up with "never press these two buttons at the same time or it can explode" operate with an implicit assumption that those Kids These Days must know something their parents don't in order to mess around so casually.