The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.
What exactly requires tech savviness about social media? The interfaces are designed to be simple and intuitively usable by the lowest common denominator. The platforms' front-ends expose almost nothing about they actually work, and there is almost no way for an average user to fix any problems should they occur, or to customize the closed-source app released in the walled garden. Does Instagram teach you about image codecs? Does the average user have any idea how the computer vision in Snapchat filters works? When YouTube suffers an outage, what can they do but shrug and wait until the people working there fix it?
That's exactly what the article above is saying. The kids aren't learning any problem solving skills. They may be better at following social media trends, knowing the latest memes, and finding the latest hot new app, but that has nothing to do with technical aptitude.
It's more akin to the fact that I'm woefully unaware of most new pop music coming out these days as well as many TV shows/films/video channels that cater to a younger audience. Given that I'm at least reasonably connected on social media I'm probably not as completely in the dark as some my age, but I'm certainly not pop culture savvy.
What is "pop culture" even? Its just a measure of targeted advertising towards the most ill equipped to respond to it productively or healthily. There was pop culture targeting your parents, yourself, your kids, and there will be something targeting your kids kids.
The fact you show no interest in it is more a reflection that you got through the dredge of surface level vapid entertainment all kids are subject to, come out on the other side, and realize "hey look, theres stuff thats a lot better / more interesting than that" and unsurprisingly gravitate towards that over the next iteration of entry level disposable culture targeting kids.
Exactly this. We think we are tech savvy because we are better than them at our tech. That tech was plumbing for your dad, and it’s something 90s-00s for me. My kids do stuff better than me that I don’t even consider tech but it probably is.
That’s how you become an old person that know nothing about tech - you keep being good at tech and don’t consider the stuff you aren’t good as to be tech. Eventually that other tech is all there is and you are now your dad.
Tech savvy is a misnomer a lot of the time. Because it is not technology that is hard to learn as such, but the flaws. It always annoyed me when I was younger that people would think you are smart because you could brute force a printer setup. When in reality it is because I probably had nothing else to do so I could "learn" by banging my head against the wall.
