Kids might be digital natives – but a study shows they aren’t computer literate
If you were born between the early 1980&#x27;s and the mid-1990&#x27;s, you probably have more technical know-how than those born earlier or later.<p>That&#x27;s because during the years 1990-2005, tech had penetrated much of the population, but it was rough around the edges enough that you had to understand it if you wanted to get it working.<p>Take modems.  In the &#x27;90s have a dial-up modem that allowed a single computer to connect at a time over the phone line.  You had to manually initiate and hang up your Internet connection, and you couldn&#x27;t use it on more than one computer at a time.  That process forced you to understand a bit of how the Internet works in order to use it.<p>Now the Internet&#x27;s just this magic thing that you have all the time if you just plug in a thing and pay the bill.  I&#x27;ve noticed a lot of people use the words &quot;Wifi,&quot; &quot;router,&quot; &quot;modem,&quot; and &quot;Internet connection&quot; interchangeably.  The details are hidden from a user in a way they weren&#x27;t in the days of dialup.<p>Likewise, DOS.  Before Windows moved away from DOS, you sometimes needed to work with the command line.  Occasionally you had to create boot disks for your software that would load different drivers and stuff.  Again, you had to know something about the command line and system configuration in order to use the computer effectively.<p>I guess what it really boils down to:  In my day we walked to school in a blizzard every day, uphill both ways.  Now get off my lawn, whippersnappers.<p>(Although when I was a student one professor regaled the class with tales of his first computer, some early home computer -- I don&#x27;t think he ever told us the model, but it may have been Z80-based -- whose unboxing procedure involved some quality time with a soldering iron, and if you wanted to use permanent tape storage you had to toggle in a tape driver using a switch panel directly connected to the bus lines.  Maybe every generation of tech enthusiasts has its own &quot;kids these days are soft, in my day we walked uphill both ways&quot; story.)