Chapotraphouse

In a different way. Boomers are tech illiterate in the way that many don't know how to use the physical device (as well as the software inside). Gen X had to get a passing understanding to get by.

Gen Z are tech illiterate in the way that they're extremely fluent in the apps they regularly use but are clueless re: applications that aren't those specific ones, let alone a website. I've heard that zoomers struggle to use Microsoft Office, navigate a desktop site, a work email that's not the iOS mail app they've used since 14, etc.

I've seen a 21 year old struggle to download a torrent, because they kept clicking the fake download buttons on the ads. Me explaining that you can hover a cursor over a hyperlink to see where it leads and if it's not a magnet link or another link on the current website you're on, it's leading you off site blew his mind. He's gotten better since, but man. The kid spends like 6-10 hours a day on computers but can't navigate a website. Also keyboard shortcuts. Outside of ctrl+c and ctrl+v, he had no idea about any of the common ones. Maybe Alt + F4 due to cultural osmosis and he plays a lot of video games, but man. He accidentally closed a tab and his first instinct was to google the exact same phrase that led him to the website to navigate back to the page. Not 'start typing the url and see if autocomplete gets you back', not 'check the history tab', and especially not 'press ctrl+alt+z'

If it's in terms of language, it's like boomers are trying to understand a language they don't speak, Gen X are conversational in the language due to necessity, Millenials tend to be the most fluent due to growing up with it, and Gen Z grew up after the Machine God did a 9/11 on the Tower of Babel and they speak variations of the successor languages with low mutual intelligibility.