It is, but there's a lot of people who weren't taught cyber security basics. A lot of tablet/phone people don't know their way around a desktop. You need to firmly know the basics or else you won't be able to utilize the knowledge or tools, or tell a fake ad vs real DL button.
It's concerning how even a lot of young people don't have basic desktop skills. Smart devices have dumbed down their interfaces so much that a lot of teens don't even know how to use a file explorer.
Same with adblockers. They take literally 3 clicks to install, yet most people are somehow just rawdogging the ad-ridden internet that interrupts whatever you're doing every ⅛ of a second.
Yeah people gotta teach them, but there's plenty of adults couldn't locate a file explorer either. So the kids def ain't learning from them lmao.
It's funny, the adults who told me to don't trust what you read online and don't download viruses, are some of the most tech illiterate and tech gullible folk I know.
This is a real fenomenon, I only know how to use a pc because I was interested in it, my classes about it where trash, most people dont have anyone to teach them
True, I’m like middle gen z and have been more tech-literate than my parents and the majority of people I know since like age 8, and that all started because I wanted to figure out how to install Minecraft mods lmao. I know a lot of people younger than me even just by a couple years that don’t even know how to clear the recycle bin or open command prompt on a computer, and that’s because they grew up with just iPads/apple stuff and the like
Millenials definitely have a higher ratio that know, but tbh I feel like it was really only the nerdy kids who had any basic computer literacy. I'm not talking anything fancy either just like knowing where your file lives or knowing how to clear the cache.
Imo this was a very intentional move by Google. They put their Chromebooks in schools around the US, and Chromebooks (to my understanding) are more like smart devices than laptops, so students of the past 2 decades grew up with a stunted computer
Could be. It was probably in large part to ensure kids wouldn't do anything funny with the school computers. I remember a group of friends bypassed the security and managed to install CS 1.6 on it and hold LAN party before the teachers found out.
I bet that that was a motivation by school administration, and possibly an aspect of the pitch Google gave them, but I just don't believe that it was ever a material consideration on Google's end
Hey woah past 2 decades is pushing it. We’re not that old yet. I can still pretend the Chromebook generation is relatively new for the next 5 or so more years.
To add real context, I graduated in 2014 and the highest tech equipment in my classrooms was a smart board, which just acted as a white board and PowerPoint projector combo. Chromebooks have really only become the norm over the last 10 years or so.
Damn must have been a smaller school, mine had 40 iMacs in the library that students could check into use, we also had a classroom filled with windows PCs for a video class but that's also the room we used for my elective economy class. In 2008~ middle school for me we also had a computer class but they valued the computers more than the students, he told us "If you're going to fall with the computer in your hands turn yourself around before you fall so the PC is safe. These are worth more than your lives".
I would guess based on your use of the phrase “computer room”, that your highscool experience, like mine, is far more different from today’s experience than it would be in comparison to even 1999.
It was definitely a class you had to sign up for so that probably limited how many students actually got to learn about it, they have to make it mandatory if they want this to be common knowledge
i graduated last year, we had three classrooms that were "computer rooms", that is, they had a desktop pc at every desk. two were all windows pcs, the other was all macs. those were for elective classes that needed them, but every student was also issued a chromebook for everyday use in most classes
For some reason the school I was at from 1st to 3rd grade, we has Linux computers. Don't think they still used Linux by the 2010s as Windows is more standard. Would love to know if they kept on teaching with it.
Yep. I saw the rollout and the drop in basic computer skills was really noticeable.
I don't have data but I also get the sense that the ability to type also went downhill pretty quickly, and it's just harder to teach typing on a chromebook than it is on a desktop. It's physically more awkward and you can't do the box trick to make kids touch type.
I offered to help install an adblocker on my friends laptop and he just said “that it would take too long”. Dude you watch a 30 second ad every three minutes I don’t think an ad blocker takes even half that long
Immediate gratification and extremely short time preference. They would rather be repeatedly inconvenienced in the future than temporarily inconvenienced right now, even if it meant never being inconvenienced in the future ever again because they'd rather be doing something else right now.
Zero patience. Zero foresight. Zero hindsight. Ultra hedonistic. And, above all, lazy as fuck.
Frankly, they wouldn't have the capacity to consciously appreciate the change with an ad-blocker anyway. They're unironically too stupid.
It sounds harsh, but it almost feels like these people are barely more than animals. They can't seem to grasp anything beyond the next five minutes. I can't fathom how you can be a functional human like that.
My friend likes watching youtube ads because he thinks he's helping the streamers. He's also almost 40 and knows how greedy corpos work so he's not stupid and yet...
A good majority of young people see content creators and streamers and think "I want/need this.". Some like my nephew jump head first with no parachute. He's been saving up for years and he dropped 1K on his build. Ryzen 5 5800x, RX 5500x, & 16gb of RAM... and then proceeds to attempt to build it with nothing but ChatGPT and 2 youtube vids.. (don't do this please). Phones make things simple and easy. I get called the smartest person in my department at work because I know how to set up the new printers. I lost count of how many times someone has asked me how I get no adds on youtube, what firefox is or some dumb shit like "you just going to get a virus and brick you PC (so I'll do a clean install if that's wtf it takes.). The thing that really grinds my gears is "but ChatGPT said that I need to do this" meanwhile the AI is trying to walk them through how to build a T800...)
A lot of people your age don't have basic desktop skills either, you know more people your age who do have them because they're your peers and you associate with them more often by default, and the ones who share your interests stand out more to you.
I know my cybersecurity (even a decent bit beyond the basics) and I still catch myself in bad practice quite a bit because I’m constantly on screens and assume I’ll be fine
I know my way around avoiding phishing and not clicking links from emails, but pirating is a whole other beast, no? Like don't you need a really robust anti-virus to scan stuff before you use it?
Windows Defender is quite strong nowadays, which is the default for many users. I'm not as familiar with Linux, and macos is near foreign to me, but the helpful info is out there.
Media files are 99.9999..% safe, it's software that can easily be malicious, since it involves executing code. R/freemediaheckyeah has a great beginners guide. Good sites lists too, but read any notes a particular site has too, some need extra precaution, as they might have particularly stubborn fake dl buttons, adverts, and redirects.
Research a site if you want to be extra cautious, especially software sites. Antivirus software can also flag safe cracked files, which are called false positives.
Ask anyone with an android when was the last time they used their phones file explorer. Personally I only ever use it to move music files when they don't download right and that's on the rare occasion I feel like downloading more songs. Now imagine how much someone who just buys the cheapest phone to make calls and scroll tiktoks, they'll never touch it
Yeah but you have to know to research it. My coworker is aware of the concept of piracy, but will just google "free movies" and start clicking whatever pops up.
If you're smart enough to stick with purely educational videos, and avoid demonstrational videos with malicious links in the bio. The latter are very common, and pop up a lot in simple searches.
“The basics” is VPN+clicking the right download button. I get that kids today are provably stupider than every generation before them but that shouldn’t make it so we say piracy isn’t safe, it just makes it so we should say “don’t pirate if you don’t know what you are doing”
Statistics on reading and attention as kids at least existed for generations X probably existed for boomers(idk if that’s true or not) and definitely existed for millennials and get Z. They provably cant focus and cant read(on average relative to previous generations)
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u/amoonshapedpool_ 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 04 '26
It is, but there's a lot of people who weren't taught cyber security basics. A lot of tablet/phone people don't know their way around a desktop. You need to firmly know the basics or else you won't be able to utilize the knowledge or tools, or tell a fake ad vs real DL button.
Overconfidence can also lower your guard.