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At the same time, there's plenty of people who didn't grow up with the technology and manage to navigate their devices fine. I had to teach an elder what the notifications bar was because their children never bothered to explain it. We should take some responsibility instead of being ageist by assuming old people are dumb.

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> assuming old people are dumb

Not just old people. Hackernews skews technical and seems to mostly interact with other technical people.

There are people in their 30's, 40's and 50's who don't own a computer at all (other than a smartphone), don't interact with computers on a regular basis, and almost exclusively use the built-in talk/text/browser apps that come pre-installed.

It may be a relatively small percentage of the adult population in the US, but it is still many millions of people.

Some of it isn't them being dumb, it's them being stubborn. My dad has been using computers since the 80s and used probably every Microsoft OS from DOS to 11. Give him a Linux PC and he could probably fumble his way around. Try to tell him what the notification bar is on Android and he just straight up won't listen. He doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to know how to type without poking at individual keys on mobile. He doesn't want to know what the difference is between an app and a website. He doesn't want to know what the home screen/launcher is. Many older people have issues with understanding. Many have no problems with understanding. And many just don't want to know. Some people just want things to work the way they always have (and they have a point: there's no excuse for Microsoft changing how their mail app interface works every 3-5 years)

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