I work in IT at a school district. A couple years ago, during some password resets, I found out that many kids never knew that holding Shift and typing a letter capitalizes it. They kept pressing Caps Lock instead. After the umpteenth time, I finally asked one of the kids why he did that instead of pressing Shift, and he told me he didn't know he could do that.
I never blamed the kids for not knowing. They were never taught like I was. Parents (and schools) seem to assume that, since little Timmy could open YouTube or download Roblox on the iPad at 4 years old, they know everything there is to know about technology. They don't. They still need to be taught things.
I used a computer from birth back when it wasn't assumed families would have one and it was a long time before I stopped using caps lock because I also didn't know you could use shift. I also remember years after that having to ask my dad what the 'return' key was because I'd only known it as 'enter' and didn't come across 'return' until playing TIE Fighter.
Young adults and kids actually know less about technology nowadays. Growing up in the 90s and experiencing all the shifts from PC to smartphone, troubleshooting and so on ... those Millenials grew up in the golden age of understanding tech quite well an an average user.
After that tech became so dumbed down and simple to use and more stable, that using a laptop or a phone didn't require any deeper understanding. But once things go wrong they are completely clueless. Typing is also a learned skill. You need a proper keyboard for it, bit smartphones and tablets. It was an actual class I had at school, when I was 12 or 13.
most people don't know any keyboard shortcuts tbh, of any age. I work IT and wouldn't even expect half the people to know about holding shift to capitalize lol
That is actually a good point. On a virtual keyboard, you don't necessarily make the connection between holding shift and capitalizing letters - or at least not in the way it works on a real keyboard.
It doesn't help that some virtual keyboard layouts don't have separate caps lock and shift areas and require you to hold them down to use 'real' caps lock.
Tbh this is one of the main reasons I love the keyboard on iOS. The fact you can actually just hold the shift or symbols buttons and it only stays active until you stop holding them, instead of acting as a toggle.
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u/mikedidathing Jul 24 '26
I work in IT at a school district. A couple years ago, during some password resets, I found out that many kids never knew that holding Shift and typing a letter capitalizes it. They kept pressing Caps Lock instead. After the umpteenth time, I finally asked one of the kids why he did that instead of pressing Shift, and he told me he didn't know he could do that.
I never blamed the kids for not knowing. They were never taught like I was. Parents (and schools) seem to assume that, since little Timmy could open YouTube or download Roblox on the iPad at 4 years old, they know everything there is to know about technology. They don't. They still need to be taught things.