Technology

I learned to touch type quickly mostly out of necessity to communicate quickly in online games before voice chat was a thing.

Gonna defend gen z a bit here. Unlike older generations, gen z was raised in a large part only on locked down, touch screen interface devices like smartphones and tablets. These devices are designed to not be tampered with, designed and streamlined to "just work" for certain tasks without any hassle.

If you only have a smartphone or tablet, how are you supposed to learn how to use a desktop os? How are you supposed to learn how to use a file system? How are you supposed to learn how to install programs outside of a central app store? How are you supposed to learn to type on a physical keyboard if you do not own one?

I worked as a public school technician for a while and we used Chromebooks at my school system. Chromebooks are just as locked down if not more locked down than a smartphone due to school restrictions imposed via Google's management interface. Sure they have a physical keyboard and "files" but many interfaces nowadays are point and click rather than typing. The filesystem (at least on the ones I worked with) were locked down to just the Downloads, Documents, Pictures, etc. directories with everything else locked down and inaccessible.

Schools (at least the ones I went to and worked at) don't teach typing classes anymore. They don't teach cursive classes. They don't teach any classes on how to use technology outside of a few Microsoft certification programs that students have to chose to be in (and are awfully dull and will put you to sleep).

Gen Z does not have these technology skills because they largely do not have access to anything that they can use to learn these skills and they aren't taught them by anyone. Gen Z is just expected to know these skills from being exposed to technology but that's not how it works in the real world.

These people aren't dumb as rocks either like so many older people say they are. It's a bell curve, you'll have the people dumb as rocks, the average person, and the Albert Einsteins. Most people here on lemmy fall closer to the "Albert Einstein" end of the tech savvy curve so there's a lot of bias here. But I've had so many cases where I've met Boomers, Gen X, and Millennial who just can't grasp technology at all.

Also, before someone says "they can just look it up on the internet", they have no reason to. What's the point of looking up these skills if they cannot practice them anywhere? Sure, you'll have a few that are curious and interested in it but a vast majority of people have interests that lie outside of tech skills.

Tl;dr Gen Z is just expected to know technology and thus aren't taught how to use it or even have access to non-locked down devices.

As others highlighted this is not surprising given that Gen Z uses phones a lot more than computers, and writing in one is completely different than in the other.

[Discussion from multiple comments ITT] It's also damn slower to write in a phone screen, simply because it's smaller - you need a bit more precision to hit the keys, and there's no room to use all the fingers (unlike in a physical keyboard).

Swiping helps, but it brings up its own problems - the keyboard application needs to "guess" what you're typing, and correcting mistakes consumes time; you need to look at the word being "guessed" instead of either the keyboard or the text being written, so your accuracy goes down (increasing the odds of wrong "guesses"); and eventually you need to tap write a few words anyway, so you're basically required to type well two ways instead of just one to get any semblance of speed.

I have 7 typewriters. My son will know how to touch type :)

Gen-X here with 2 Gen-Z kids. I developed my typing skills playing MUDS in the early 90’s. My kids are….ok….at typing, and despite my guidance over the years, are really bad at troubleshooting though when something goes wrong. It should “just work” to them. If it doesn’t, then the solution is to replace it.

However, I WILL SAY…my typing speed is about 100-110 WPM on a keyboard, and that my daughter could probably match that speed typing on her phone.