Technology

I mean, as a millennial, I mostly taught myself to type. I'm fast enough, but have bad technique and could be faster. I was only ever actually trained to type in grade school, and barely. Once in a while in computer class we would play an educational typing game.

My mom is much better at typing than I am, because she was trained to type in college. That's not really a thing anymore.

We’re not even teaching them cursive anymore and they still can’t type? What are they doing in schools?

The physical keyboard is just a tool. There are alternatives like speech-to-text software, virtual keyboards with swipe features, or stenotype.

The goal should be to use whatever is most effective and efficient for yourself, so if Gen Zrs are more used to touch screen, maybe they should invent a touch screen interface that you can use with the computer, maybe even incorporating the mouse somehow.

For me personally the touch interfaces right now are fucked up - I always tap the wrong letters on my phone, the auto-correct and suggestions used to compensate for this often times make it even worse, and swipe doesn't come up with the words I want, I often have to swipe multiple times. I can't imagine operating a computer like this, but maybe for Gen Zrs it's no problem.

Maybe in the future you just need to think the word and it appears on the screen, and typing would be obsolete.

That just means they are probably less relevant skills.

My class never had typing classes in school. Our IT lessons were very limited.
My current style is a hybrid of sort of blind typing based on pc gaming (you cant hunt for keys in a match) and looking for keys using about 4-8 fingers.

but gen z is not tech savvy. They can use a browser. and watch youtube. They never advance past that stage

I built my Gen Z nephew a PC with a GTX 950 a few years back. When I went by to gift him a new video card I found out that he hooked up his video output from the motherboard the whole time. Don't know how that reflects on all kids from his generation but it was kinda funny.

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've literally never heard Gen Z described as tech savvy.