Which is about people wanting an AO3 app, but then it became large and way off topic, so here you go.
Nobody under the age of 20 knows how to use a computer or the internet. At all. They only know how to use apps. Their whole lives are in their phones or *maybe* a tablet/iPad if they’re an artist. This is becoming a huge concern.
I’m a private tutor for middle- and high-school students, and since 2020 my business has been 100% virtual. Either the student’s on a tablet, which comes with its own series of problems for screen-sharing and file access, or they’re on mom’s or dad’s computer, and they have zero understanding of it.
They also don’t know what the internet is, or even the absolute basics of how it works. You might not think that’s an important thing to know, but stick with me.
Last week I accepted a new student. The first session is always about the tech – I tell them this in advance, that they’ll have to set up a few things, but once we’re set up, we’ll be good to go. They all say the same thing – it won’t be a problem because they’re so “online” that they get technology easily.
I never laugh in their faces, but it’s always a close thing. Because they are expecting an app. They are not expecting to be shown how little they actually know about tech.
I must say up front: this story is not an outlier. This is *every* student during their first session with me. Every single one. I go through this with each of them because most of them learn more, and more solidly, via discussion and discovery rather than direct instruction.
Once she logged in, I asked her to click on the icon for screen-sharing. I described the icon, then started with “Okay, move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen.” She did the thing that those of us who are old enough to remember the beginnings of widespread home computers remember - picked up the mouse and moved it and then put it down. I explained she had to pull the mouse along the surface, and then click on the icon. She found this cumbersome. I asked if she was on a laptop or desktop computer. She didn’t know what I meant. I asked if the computer screen was connected to the keyboard as one piece of machinery that you can open and close, or if there was a monitor - like a TV - and the keyboard was connected to another machine either by cord or by Bluetooth. Once we figured it out was a laptop, I asked her if she could use the touchpad, because it’s similar (though not equivalent) to a phone screen in terms of touching clicking and dragging.
Once we got her using the touchpad, we tried screen-sharing again. We got it working, to an extent, but she was having trouble with… lots of things. I asked if she could email me a download or a photo of her homework instead, and we could both have a copy, and talk through it rather than put it on the screen, and we’d worry about learning more tech another day. She said she tried, but her email blocked her from sending anything to me.
This is because the only email address she has is for school, and she never uses email for any other purpose. I asked if her mom or dad could email it to me. They weren’t home.
(Re: school email that blocks any emails not whitelisted by the school: that’s great for kids as are all parental controls for young ones, but 16-year-olds really should be getting used to using an email that belongs to them, not an institution.)
I asked if the homework was on a paper handout, or in a book, or on the computer. She said it was on the computer. Great! I asked her where it was saved. She didn’t know. I asked her to search for the name of the file. She said she already did that and now it was on her screen. Then, she said to me: “You can just search for it yourself - it’s Chapter 5, page 11.”
This is because homework is on the school’s website, in her math class’s homework section, which is where she searched. For her, that was “searching the internet.”
Her concepts of “on my computer” “on the internet” or “on my school’s website” are all the same thing. If something is displayed on the monitor, it’s “on the internet” and “on my phone/tablet/computer” and “on the school’s website.”
She doesn’t understand “upload” or “download,” because she does her homework on the school’s website and hits a “submit” button when she’s done. I asked her how she shares photos and stuff with friends; she said she posts to Snapchat or TikTok, or she AirDrops. (She said she sometimes uses Insta, though she said Insta is more “for old people”). So in her world, there’s a button for “post” or “share,” and that’s how you put things on “the internet”.
She doesn’t know how it works. None of it. And she doesn’t know how to use it, either.
Also, none of them can type. Not a one. They don’t want to learn how, because “everything is on my phone.”
And you know, maybe that’s where we’re headed. Maybe one day, everything will be on “my phone” and computers as we know them will be a thing of the past. But for the time being, they’re not. Students need to learn how to use computers. They need to learn how to type. No one is telling them this, because people think teenagers are “digital natives.” And to an extent, they are, but the definition of that has changed radically in the last 20-30 years. Today it means “everything is on my phone.”
we stopped having computer classes because ‘everyone knows how to use a computer’ and then we suddenly fucking didn’t
In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
God you guys I never thought this would become so popular 😱 I was gonna name it The Weather Project after the art installment that inspired it
By Olafur Eliasson
This is the most important post that I’ve ever made. Its for screaming out with every fiber of your being that you’re worth something. You’re worth everything.
ngl I am very concerned when I see people on here declaring CNN, NBC, BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc etc all irredeemable propaganda with the same broad brushstrokes as a right-wing MAGA would
so conservatives are getting their news from Fox, what is everyone on here doing? because it does feel like unsourced tiktok and twitter and tumblr and reddit threads from anonymous internet people have replaced that??
like there has to be some way to read news from actual journalists and be able to parse those stories yourself and conscientiously weigh reporter biases (this is what reading comprehension is) rather than covering your eyes every time you see a particular news logo you’ve decided is Fake News
there’s a post floating around of everyone clowning on the headline of a WaPost article (rightly or not) but the full text of the article itself is fully readable in the screenshot and just…it’s so painfully obvious that no one is reading beyond headlines anymore, because the actual text is fully calling out the IDF for horrifying crimes - but the comments are all like “look at them covering up for israel” ?? no they’re not???
I’m honestly reeling from this because it was one of the most heartbreaking and condemning stories I’ve read recently, and it ends with “what did these infants ever do?” like this is exactly the type of story that needs to be seen!! and everyone who is supposedly in support of Palestine is passing it around without even reading it and saying that it’s propaganda!! I’m losing my mind
I decent reason why people do this is because the actual articles are behind paywalls and 12 foot ladder doesn’t work anymore
