Who Knew being Technology-Savvy had an Age Limit

Our society has this stereotype that the younger generations are the tech-savvy individuals and we are so surprised when we see someone who looks like he could be in his sixties or seventies with an iPhone5. We find it mind-blowing. We assume older generations wouldn’t know what to do with a phone if you gave it to them. Not only do we categorize the older generations as the least tech-savvy generations, but we also assume they hate all technology because they believe it is more complicated and makes life harder.

On the other hand, the younger generation may be tech-savvy, but we are more disconnected to traditional print and we are more impatient because everything is just a click away.

It is time that we stop filling our heads and others head with this fallacy. In actuality many people of the younger generation tend to prefer the physical book in front of them. Especially those in college; a lot of college students frequently buy the textbooks because they simply learn better when the material is there. Going to Google is the last resort most of the time.

In Siva Vaidhyanathan article Generational Myth, she makes a very valid point that we continually make these generalizations about every generation decade after decade, only to find out that it’s a very false and too broad characterization, like most stereotypes.

“Age ain’t nothin’ but a number” as the slang term goes, and rightly so. Before we go calling ourselves tech-savvy or the tech-savvy generation, we need to first define what being tech-savvy really is and we to stop trying to find these “totalizing explanations for cultural phenomena.”

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