Haven't heard anyone put it this succinctly. Yes!
Late Gen X/Millennials had to learn the internet in stages in childhood/young adulthood so were forced to figure it out in several permutations.
In a way, both Boomers and Gen Z came to it late when it was already fully formed.
I'm generalizing, of course, but: 1) They often believe anything they see and don't think to fact-check, 2) they are often fooled by AI, 3) they use social media to "Google" things, 4) they panic when something "doesn't work" and have no idea how to problem-solve digital problems.
I was intrigued because I'm noticing different internet usage by my current college students, but hadn't connected it to Boomer usage. My CA experience is 1) they are highly skeptical of the internet, but trusting of social media 2) hate AI (mostly art students) 3) absolutely yes 4) not finding that
The degradation of Google's usefulness has led to a lot of social media "research" and the downfall of trustworthy sources has (incredibly!) led to more trust of social media, esp. TikTok.
The defining trait that boomers and genx share versus millennials regarding tech (not all of course) is when faced with new or strange tech they tend to throw their hands up an say nope I'll never understand this, whereas millennials will press buttons and open hatches to figure things out.
The old people are terrified of breaking things because their lead poisoned parents would beat them over any small mis step. My generation broke stuff and rebuilt it to understand it. We had latitude.
I see that too, but mostly in non-art and non-humanities students. I had two business majors, graduating seniors, who did not know how to print a doc or make a pdf and did not think to Google it or ask for help.
That's why millenials are sort of the peanut butter in this sandwich. We'll poke a VCR or printer to see how it works, but both our parents and our kids (in general) are like "ugh it no worky guess we have to buy a new one."
