By Kristy Volmert | Staff Writer
Several reports show that Generation Z’s chronic use of cellphones has led to a decline in familiarity with keyboards. Teenagers and young adults have grown up in a digital world where socials have become a default source of entertainment, causing many to adapt to touchscreens in a large generational shift.
“I never learned to type because I wasn’t that generation, and now I regret it,” 22-year-old musician Billie Eilish said in an an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine in April.
Members of Gen Z are commonly referred to as “digital natives” and are thought to be the most tech-savvy of all the generations. But investigations are now finding that keyboard typing skills are their weakness.
With Apple launching newer versions of the iPad, many students are substituting it in place of a laptop. Houston freshman Kathryn Weinstein said she prefers using her iPad to take notes, especially since she is able to handwrite them with her Apple Pencil.
“I feel that writing things down helps me retain information better and having it online allows me to have it with me a lot more often,” she said.
People born specifically in the early 2000s and later were introduced to mobile devices at a young age. Playing mobile games on cell phones and iPads familiarized them with touchscreens long before they began using computers.
“I have learned different tips and tricks over the years for little tools like split screen and screen sharing and things of that such because of the everyday use of my phone,” Weinstein said.
Social media’s era of dominance has even further exacerbated this matter, as pre-teens and teenagers who are just beginning to use computers are spending majority of their screen time on iPhones.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, abundant use of touchscreen devices has significantly altered how people interact with technology, particularly students. A look into the online platform Canvas, which is used at Baylor, showed that between March and May, 39% of assignments submitted were sent through mobile devices instead of computers. On the other hand, teachers were doing more than 90% of their work on Canvas with a computer.
“Over the past 25 years, the number of U.S. high schools teaching typing has fallen drastically,” the article states. “While about 44% of students who graduated high school in 2000 took a keyboarding course, by 2019 that figure had plummeted to 2.5%, according to the U.S. Department of Education.”
Keyboard skills, though seldom acknowledged, are still a necessity in many professional settings. A report this week from The Tribune Express elaborated on the necessity of keyboard skills, describing it as “an essential skill in many professional and academic settings.”
“As more standardized tests move to computer-based formats, students who struggle with typing may lose valuable time focusing on the keyboard rather than the exam content,” the report said.
The Wall Street Journal also reports that the demand for typing classes in Texas education programs has increased due to the implementation of online exams.
However, this digital era comes with plenty of benefits for Gen Z. Social media may be developing stronger writers as students are subconsciously improving their writing skills by writing for pleasure on social media instead of just for assignments.
A Wright State University report by Jim Hannah quotes Jeffrey T. Grabill, director of the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center at Michigan State University. According to Grabill, this generation is “writing a lot more than when all they did was write for school.”
While many argue that the need for keyboard skills is an essential life skill, others point out the decline in its essentiality. Dr. Charles A. Weaver, associate dean for sciences in the Department of Psychology and Neurosciences at Baylor, said that developments in technology are simply changing the ways we use it academically.
“It’s true that fewer schools teach keyboarding skills, but I think that’s because there just isn’t a need anymore,” Weaver said. “When I was in junior high school, we had typing classes on real typewriters, and many of the students had never used one before. That’s just no longer the case.
“The technologies we use to communicate change over time — cursive writing was a staple of instruction 50 years ago, but isn’t a skill needed much these days,” Weaver said. “‘T9′ texting on old phones was a highly-valued skill 20 years ago, but it’s a relic of the past these days. No doubt that 50 years from now, some other form of computer input will have been developed, and at that point the days of using keyboard might seem quaint.”
Social media has brought about several changes in the lifestyle of today’s youth, keyboard skills being just a small part of a larger array of problems.
Weaver recommends picking up Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation” for a really good discussion of these and other issues.
“We can and should be concerned about many of the effects of social media, such as the ease with which misinformation gets shared and eventually accepted as true,” Weaver said. “The time spent mindlessly scrolling that could be used more productively, the problems in self-esteem that emerge from false comparisons to what we believe is true of others and so on.”
