A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

It&#x27;s worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you&#x27;re constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME.<p>The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and hànzì input. As a second-language user of Chinese, I find it considerably faster and easier to input hànzì on a smartphone than with a physical keyboard. The context switching between inputting pīnyīn and selecting hànzì is much less expensive when the hànzì are presented directly above the on-screen keyboard. The prediction and correction algorithms seem to be far more intelligent on mobile, which largely compensates for the slower and more error-prone tactile experience.<p>It is my understanding that most young Japanese people prefer the flick input method, which is a refinement of the old keitai input method used on featurephones with numeric keypads; they are often startlingly quick at using this method, but it poses a far higher switching cost when moving to a QWERTY-derived physical keyboard. I find it entirely plausible that the flick method could simply be inherently superior.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8V-za9LT_30" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8V-za9LT_30</a>

Do your children a favor and get them a &quot;real&quot; computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet.<p>I&#x27;ve found it helps with several things. For one, I&#x27;ve seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I&#x27;ve not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces.<p>Also, learning to use a keyboard while learning the alphabet seems like a virtuous cycle, at least in my personal experiences.<p>And it may sound old fashioned, but making things too easy for kids makes them less independent and less willing to put in the effort required for learning.<p>Compare for example searching for animal pictures using voice search versus going to the search engine, typing out the term, clicking on &quot;images&quot;... The first is much easier and teaches instant gratification, while the second teaches perseverance and comes with a greater sense of accomplishment.<p>Disclaimer: purely anecdotal, take the preceding with a salt shaker...

The first example provided in the article (indeed the first sentence) is “How do I double click?”, and I want to focus on this.<p>As a kid in the 90s, I just took double clicking as a necessary evil. But after many many opportunities of trying (mostly successfully) to teach it to both the elderly and to kids, I&#x27;ve gradually grown to hate it. It&#x27;s such a horrible gesture, difficult to perform, complicated to reason about and entirely disconnected from any real-world metaphor.<p>May double clicking die off and vanish, never to be found again, except for in the annals of bad ideas.

This is similar to the stereotype of: young people are good with computers. Browsing Instagram is not the same as creating value through programming and complex problem solving.

I&#x27;m confused here. The article implies that kids aren&#x27;t learning how to type because they don&#x27;t have access to a PC at home. But for the majority of the history of computing, it was the case that most people wouldn&#x27;t have had access to a PC at home as children. My parents learned to type on typewriters at college. I had a mandatory class entirely dedicated to typing in middle school. Have schools stopped offering computer classes, assuming that kids already know how to use them from their experience at home? If so, then that sounds like a problem all on its own given that poorer households might not have had a computer even during the PC golden age.

&gt;Given that they can write and submit their school reports with smartphones<p>Would students really do this? I couldn&#x27;t imagine trying to write an entire essay or a lab report on a smartphone. Maybe Japanese schools don&#x27;t have to turn in longer things like that?

An interesting part in the article:<p>&gt; Lena-Sophie Mueller, of the German nonprofit Initiative D21, pointed out: “Timetables (for railways) are no longer available in paper form. More and more services are based on the Internet [...]”<p>This has been going on for quite a while. I distinctly remember being stranded in Düsseldorf a few years back. I was at the train station, looking for a train (I knew the destination but not which train I had to take). It was very late and since the roaming costs were horrendous (around 15 € per MB, I think), I had deactivated all mobile data on my phone.<p>I searched more or less the whole train station, failing to find some printed plan that told me which train to pick. You could see where the plans used to be, but they had all been removed. Luckily, a lonely waffle vendor still was around and helped me out with his iPhone.<p>I found a line&#x2F;station map later on -- <i>inside</i> the train in question. How anyone can come to the conclusion that this is the place to look, is beyond me.

If you aren&#x27;t actually creating content [art, software, serious writing, etc] then using a mobile is fine for just consuming and it isn&#x27;t surprising that these groups don&#x27;t know how to use a computer.<p>It is sad though, that young people appear to be less computer literate in terms of creating content (as an overall percentage of previous generations).

Having volunteered to teach kids coming from single-parent household with no computer at home, I&#x27;ve seen how the inability to type on a QWERTY keyboard with any modicum of speed (hunt-and-peck) actually limits them when we encourage them to &#x27;iterate&#x27;, &#x27;try fast and fail&#x27;, &#x27;just code a line of something&#x27;, or &#x27;what will that do?&#x27;. If expressing your thoughts and intentions to the editor is painful and slow, it is a concrete barrier to learning how to fail faster.<p>Forgot teaching kids how to code right away , teach them how to type first so they can &quot;commune&quot; with the machine (ideally with ergonomics and whole arm movement in mind so RSI is not an issue).

I always thought the idea of the digital divide never went far enough. If you look at the work performed by regular people on a daily basis using computers and the work performed by skilled software engineers there is such an absurd level of difference in efficiency. Its no wonder that AI will replace most jobs people do.<p>AI will not be able to make those people more efficient, it will replace them. AI can&#x27;t help them to be more efficient since they don&#x27;t know how to think on any fundamental level.<p>&gt; “Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think” - Steve Jobs

About two years ago, while carrying out user testing at Hunter College on a prototype for their site redesign&#x2F;build (yet to be implemented due to bureaucracy...), we observed several test users default to tapping on the laptop screen to navigate. For that round the test users were students, and the ones who defaulted to tapping were of a younger age. Even after making the initial realization that the screen didn&#x27;t have touch capabilities, every few moments they would still touch the screen in an attempt to tap navigation elements or to scroll a page.<p>Personally, it was kind of a shock to witness, especially seeing that it was safe to assume that there was less than a 10 year difference in our ages. It got me thinking about a near future possibility of keyboardless computers, and the dread of writing code without one. Though it&#x27;s unlikely, it struck the fear of god in me haha

This situation is not caused by complicated Japanese input methods. This is caused by young generation who don&#x27;t use traditional computer with the keyboard.<p>It&#x27;s another digital divide. Yes.<p>The generation who didn&#x27;t have a personal computer in their young age is starting to retire.<p>Current 30s-40s years old workers are varies on computer literacy but many had a personal computer when they were a student. I belong to this generation.<p>I was hoping that the next generation will be completely digital native and all of them has computer literacy. Just laugh us and obliterate us from work force for we can&#x27;t stand a chance against such a gifted digital native generation at birth. Just like we get rid of those annoying old people who don&#x27;t have a computer literacy.<p>The invention of smartphone make that dream not happens. The smartphone makes people stupid. There is nothing smart about that computer.<p>The smartphone is inefficient and restricted computer. You don&#x27;t have a freedom to choose the OS. You don&#x27;t even have a root access to that very computer you own. It doesn&#x27;t have a keyboard which is the most efficient input device for text. The smartphone is designed for reading the text, not for writing. So the young generation starting to lose the ability to write the text.<p>What makes me surprise is, that current students use the smartphone to read the papers, to write the necessary essay and reports necessary for graduation.<p>The fresh young generations who has just graduated enter the working class without learning how to use the keyboard. But the real work which involve a lot of text writing requires efficient input device such as the keyboard.<p>So the current trending of smartphone reduce the effective good workers from already reducing younger population in Japan.<p>I refuse to own a phone. Smartphone is the worst invention of our time. It disrupt attention, reduce computer literacy, or even plain literacy for it makes harder to write the text for most of them.

I didn&#x27;t introduce anything electronic to my son until he was about 7. I then told him, he wouldn&#x27;t be allowed to use a computer until he learns to type first.<p>One year later, he was typing over 100 wpm. Now a teenager, he types about 130wpm.<p>He started with a basic online course to learn the proper technique. Then afterward, he started playing an online game called nitrotype. Which made learning to type fast enjoyable.

I&#x27;ve seen this claim over and over, and failed to see how this is a big deal. Most people in Japan in 80s couldn&#x27;t type either. (An English typewriter wasn&#x27;t something that most people would use or own.) Even if kids can&#x27;t type, I bet they would learn typing faster than the kids 30 years ago. Sounds like a fuss about nothing.

When I look at computer interfaces, I&#x27;m drawn back to the (probably mythical) story of the QWERTY keyboard, that it was designed to slow us down because our brains are faster than the mechanism of the typewriter. The modern GUI could be interpreted in that way too: Forcing us to direct the computer through a series of painfully discrete steps, to camouflage the fact that it can&#x27;t interpret natural language.<p>I&#x27;ve seen kids type on their phones, faster than I can type on a QWERTY keyboard. So, give them a phone that mimics a wireless keyboard and let them use it to interact with a bigger computer.<p>As for learning things like Excel, the sad part is not that they haven&#x27;t been taught the mechanical skills, but that those tools could enrich their K-12 education, e.g., in math and science class.

I&#x27;ve seen this phenomenon while teaching a teenager programming (in america). He had no problem typing letters, but when it came to symbols like $ % [ ( etc, it took him forever to find them. It makes sense as modern computers don&#x27;t require that you edit autoexec.bat files to get a game running and he is probably mostly on a phone or tablet anyway. But I was surprised!

I can confirm this. My brother is in high school and their school uses ipads religiously to submit work, handle slide decks and do quizzes. At his age, I had a typing speed of ~40-50WPM, he can barely do 30, with a lower accuracy (spellcheck subtly saving him). No proper typing form either because touchscreen devices are really just one finger-based. This definitely exists.

My mother told me she saw a baby using a smartphone. He was swiping, typing, zooming etc.. The mother of the baby said he was 16 months old.<p>So I can believe in a few years kids will grow up used to smooth phone&#x2F;tablet type keyboards and not the physical type.

During the fourth grade we were taught to type on keyboards, but only as one part of a computer class. I forgot how soon after. Once I got interested in PC gaming I learned to hunt and peck quicky, program batch files, and use macros.<p>Then I got a computer science degree and worked for almost two years as a programmer; typing by staring at keys using two fingers. When the time came it didn&#x27;t take long to relearn &#x27;proper&#x27; typing.<p>For some kids a little exposure to fundamentals at the right time is enough. And there is more to computing than input technique. So long as the kids are interested and motivated nature will find a way.

In the meantime, services like Venmo are becoming mobile only since the majority of users only use the mobile app (so they say). Many new startup ideas are mobile-first since that is where their user base is.

&gt; Young people who can’t use keyboards<p>How is this different from previous generations?<p>The examples listed (not knowing how to use a keyboard, not knowing how to double click and not knowing what a &#x27;cell&#x27; in a spreadsheet is) were all extremely common among my classmates back in highschool (and this is talking about the 90&#x27;s here, so computers were in fairly widespread use at this point).<p>The new digital divide is just like the old one.

The world are always evolving. Nothing sad about this. This is like saying young people can&#x27;t use abacus anymore. These new generation of young people will grow up and with new kind of input method or paradigim.<p>Who knows maybe the traditional way of programming with keyboard will evolve to something completely different for the next generation of people.

I think it will take time, keyboard, when first encounters can be hard to use, saying that, younger people these days have access to a keyboard almost 24&#x2F;7 whether it be iPads or mobiles that they use.<p>I&#x27;d like to see how kids of this generation can manage using a franking machine [1] or even a photocopier.<p>Our currently generation 25-40 used floppy disks at some point, now it&#x27;s just an icon on your software suite [2]. Will this be the case for keyboard in 10 years time? Will the physical version be needed?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frankingmachinecompare.co.uk&#x2F;what-is-franking-machine-used-for&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;frankingmachinecompare.co.uk&#x2F;what-is-franking-machin...</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hanselman.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hanselman.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Ot...</a>

I&#x27;m going to go against the grain that is advocating for &quot;keyboards are better&quot; and say that maybe the touchscreen can be a gateway to a more efficient method of rendering text to a screen vs. a keyboard.<p>Keyboards suck and cause your hands to be in an unnatural position for a long time.

Smartphones are easier to use. One only has to remember how to scroll and how to use an app store. Compared to them, PCs are much more difficult to use: they have windows, taskbars, file browsers, right and double clicks, and often don&#x27;t have a sane browser preinstalled. Installing software on a PC is complicated and it is easy to download a virus instead of Flash Player. Often external devices don&#x27;t work without drivers. As desktop OS don&#x27;t have proper process isolation, one usually has to use an antivirus.<p>Also, smartphones have physical volume keys and sleep&#x2F;wakeup much faster than PC.<p>And PCs still don&#x27;t have dedicated keys to switch input languages.<p>But typing on a smartphone is a hell. I always make mistakes and hit the wrong button.

as a blue collar engine tech, I dont think you can segment the part of the population that cant use a keyboard into old&#x2F;young. I know plenty of people within my age that freeze up trying to type in something as simple as a first name. I work with veterans that cant search for a part number, or a make&#x2F;model of a vehicle without pausing 5 seconds between keys. My typing speed is great, but its because I got into Linux and programming. The largest determination of your typing ability is whether you spend most of the day with your hands on a wrench or your fingers on a keyboard.

Back in 2011, Dan Russell (search researcher at Google) found that as much as 90% of typical computer users did not know how to use Ctrl-F to find something on a webpage. Since then, I imagine the overall percentage has gotten worse, what with Find in Page being more or less buried:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f&#x2F;243840&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;crazy...</a>

This is one reason why Apple will either have to eventually cave in and make laptops with touchscreens or just give up and just make ipads (I supposed they could say they will just make both so consumers can choose). They are teaching a generation of people to touch their screen. I see my college students using the touchscreen on their windows laptops all the time (I hardly ever use the touchscreen on my laptop). It is only a matter of time before noting having a touchscreen on a laptop will be seen as a serious deficiency in the eyes of consumers.

I&#x27;ve met (teaching) too many teens that can&#x27;t really use a computer. The procedural and hierarchical structure abstractions, even the desktop metaphor is lost on them. Idk if there&#x27;s much of a future for widespread general purpose computing. The situation is understandable, as it&#x27;s way more difficult to get the gist of how your system works nowadays than 20-30 years ago, and they&#x27;re really using mobile paradigms that don&#x27;t expect you to think about it, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a good prospect.

I’m a Japanese young engineer and same generation. I&#x27;ve encountered a similar situation. There were many colleagues of the company who don&#x27;t know copy and paste and so on. It seemed Kanji problem in comments, but young people can type Kanji exactly, on rather, they don&#x27;t know how to use computer like double click, where is power button etc. Also, Japanese IT companies hire new employees don&#x27;t have CS degrees. They hire people in all of major. It may be a problem with hiring method.

I have never not had access to a desktop PC, but what about people who can&#x27;t afford one? Say a poor family has $100 to spend on a kid. They&#x27;re going to get a phone every time. I could definitely see a poor kid only grow up on mobile devices.<p>Related story: My college roommate studied accounting and one of the first classes they made him take was remedial computing. Here&#x27;s how Excel works, use alt-tab to switch windows, that kind of thing. I thought the class sounded dumb but maybe it&#x27;s necessary.

As I see mobile eat desktop, I worry that we loose computers as a tool for creativity and end up with computers as purely communication and consumption aids.

Hello computer<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v9kTVZiJ3Uc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v9kTVZiJ3Uc</a>

I mostly hate tactile-less devices, fingers and eyes are nicely decoupled, and now I&#x27;m forced to focus on my smartphone.<p>But recently I tried typing on android keyboard with all fingers. It&#x27;s hard (no tactile delimitation or confirmation) but doable. I wonder if kids these days consider this as normal pro use of smartphones. Basically cultural relativity.

Maybe this is the case in Japan. It is certainly not true in Europe.<p>People use keyboards all the time and submitting anything beyond basic on a smartphone does not happen here.<p>I was at our local library recently, during the time students were preparing for exams. Everyone had z phone to check messages. Almost everyone had a laptop. I did not see a single tablet.

I&#x27;m in high school. I know how to double click, I know how to work with excel spreadsheets. I plan to pursue a CS degree and eventually get an engineering job in the future. Heck, I even read Hacker News.<p>Yes, us teens are on our smartphones a lot, but the majority of us know how to use computers... this article is pretty misleading.

I still prefer pencil and paper.<p>I find it&#x27;s the least limiting because you can draw anything, the easiest to use because you don&#x27;t have to learn a GUI or a language, and the fastest -- yet software people will still wonder how they can GREP it. Another contra is legibility and possibly aesthetics.

It&#x27;s too real. My niece once told me that she doesn&#x27;t like using Word on her Laptop because it&#x27;s better on the iPad... Because they keyboard is more like on her smartphone there.<p>I was like &quot;WTF&quot; internally... And she&#x27;s writing her first CV and application letters like that.

I don&#x27;t think this is a US problem. Elementary school in US commonly uses computers a lot. My children had typing lessons in 1-3 grade, and standardized tests (both math and language arts) are done on a pc&#x2F;chromebook where you&#x27;re expected to type.

Looking at the context, it seemss like it&#x27;s the keyboard that needs to evolve for these languages. I can&#x27;t fathom anyone writing a school report on a smartphone in english

I wish my ability to type at 150 WPM was a more marketable skill. It seems mostly irrelevant as anyone who can type above 50 WPM is good enough for 99% of situations.

&gt;“How do I double click?” “What is a cell in a spreadsheet?”<p>&gt;it is not uncommon for even would-be system engineers to ask such questions.<p>How the hell is it even possible?

I&#x27;ve noticed this at theCoderSchool where I teach kids to code. The majority of the kids can&#x27;t type.

They don&#x27;t teach touch-typing in school anymore? It&#x27;s really surprising and disheartening, if so.

People write reports on smartphones?<p>Everyone around me can def use a keyboard. Not ten finger touch type but near enough

IMHO 10 finger typing technique should be taught at schools just like hand-writting

I&#x27;m just curious how is the smartphone generation going to write code...

I understand the issue described in the article, but I don&#x27;t understand why people from this thread are so obfuscated about smartphones, teens not using physical keyboards or babies using smartphones better than they keep their own balance on 2 feet.<p>We were drawing with blood in caves, we were scratching stones with other stones, we were sculpting symbols on walls in Egypt, we started writing on papyrus, then paper, then started using typewriters, then physical keyboards and now virtual keyboards. Don&#x27;t act like the generation that critiques the next generation because they see the world different.<p>Kids from today probably will be the ones communicating through brainwaves with the IoT or similar; a more efficient and higher throughput interface. Yes, it&#x27;s important to learn how to use pencil and paper and how to type faster on a keyboard but move on.<p>I actually find it cumbersome to write on a keyboard on the phone, but also I feel that everything else is slow, interfaces are cumbersome, unintuitive and mostly just stupid.<p>If I search for a path on google maps, from point A to point B in a different country than I am now, and I forget to switch to car instead of public transport, then I don&#x27;t get any result. And I am like how the fuck there is no path since there is an obvious big street over there, in the middle of the screen. Oh there is a small icon somewhere to switch the type of transport from public transport to car. What if they would check there are no results and suggest to change the transport type? Thanks for rounding the corners of the search bar, it makes a great difference.<p>Let me rant about search and reaching for an app on any OS. I have 120 apps on my iPhone 8, I use 5-6 everyday let&#x27;s say. But once in a while I want to open an app that I don&#x27;t know where it is because I don&#x27;t use it often. I know how is called because is a well-known app and has the same name with their service or business or whole company. I use the search functionality on iOS, swipe down type 3 letters, wait, wait, fucking wait 2 seconds to get the results. It should be lightning fast, there are 120 strings to search through why the hell it takes so long. Oh, I typed last letter wrong, delete it, results are refreshing, write the correct one, wait again for results.<p>If I notice the lack of motion or changes then is too slow.<p>You will say that I can organize things in folders, after 3 months, oh is that app that connects to the camera in photos folder, utils, connectivity or &quot;not often&quot;. Who cares? I know how the app is called, I can search for it, why is it slow?<p>Huge props for the fact that the text box gets focused when swiping down and I don&#x27;t have to (&quot;click?&quot;) touch on it to focus.<p>There are just 2 examples, but I use apps on my phone everyday, I search for public transport on my phone every weekend, multiple times a day. Why focus on making the 3 dots for settings as 3 dots instead of 3 lines from the burger icon? It&#x27;s still unintuitive and the rest of the app is unintuitive. I could rant for weeks about other features or functionalities, on any platform you want.<p>God bless autocomplete!<p>Stop whining about small things, see the bigger context, meet people where they are going, understand their intentions, maker super usual tasks extremely easy and stop being stubborn. You will move on or other will move past you, sooner or later, worst case you will pass with your idea.<p>Context: I am working as a programmer full-time, participated for a long time in high school and university in algorithmic contests. I had multiple computers and used different OS-es. I am confortable with the CLI and I have a decent understanding how things work on the internet, what happens on multiple layers from when you type in your browser URL bar to when you see the website.

<i>they can write and submit their school reports with smartphones</i><p>I can only imagine these reports must be completely trivial if they can be written without the use of a keyboard. Standards aren’t slipping they say...

Cant say i feel sorry for the people who chose to be enslaved to interfaces. Information technology will continue to expand into human life more and more, whether you are prepared or not.

&quot;However, much of this does not align with the knowledge necessary to work in their future jobs.&quot;<p>This is <i>not</i> a problem. If they&#x27;re not smart enough to realize they are deficient in necessary skills for future personal prosperity then I probably don&#x27;t want to hire them for my company anyway. And if for some reason I do, then they better damned well learn how to type in a hurry. It&#x27;s not the most difficult skill.<p>Do you know where the real problem is with the damned smart phones and not knowing how to type and do your job? Managers. We&#x27;ve got a world full of people supposed to be managing and instead they&#x27;re spending their time texting unintelligible and incomplete crap to their employees while they gallivant around.<p>WTF happened to actually <i>working</i>?!