Are young people computer illiterate?
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This is Roundtable.

You're listening to Roundtable with myself, He Yang. I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yishan in the studio. Coming up, surprise, surprise. Young people who've grown up with smartphones may lack the basic computer skills needed in the workplace. From managing files to using office software and hardware, many Gen Z workers are apparently falling short. How can we help them get up to speed?

Can sleep talking reveal a hidden danger in your health? A Fudan University study has shown that frequent sleep talking can increase your risk of stroke by as much as 30%. Should this common behavior be taken more seriously when it comes to our health?

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Emails are fine, but voice memos are always better because we are a radio show slash podcast after all. Now let's turn our attention to... Young people don't know how to use computers? For those born in the 1980s and early 1990s in China, otherwise known as millennials and early Gen Z, owning a home computer was once...

a point of pride. But for later Gen Z and Gen Alpha, born in the late 1990s and 2000s, this sense of status has faded. With smartphones now handling almost everything, research, shopping, streaming, chatting, many tasks once reserved for computers have migrated to mobile. But smartphones still can't fully replace computers, especially in the workplace.

Shockingly, Gen Z employees aren't born knowing how to use a computer.

As your Gen Z colleague, I personally would disagree with that. But it wouldn't be a surprise because recent studies and anecdotal evidence in China indicate that many young people, especially those born in the 2000s, struggle with desktop and personal computer tasks. In this trend, they call it the 电脑文盲, or rather the computer illiterate situation.

So there's a tag now, guys, that's put on young people that they're computer illiterate because they don't know how to use one. This is shocking to me, actually. This is generation tech, right? Growing up with smartphones and applications and social media, a group of people that presumably knows how to edit videos

the perfect photo for upload, the perfect video for TikTok, totally on top of trends in terms of what can make a successful video, how long it needs to be,

I'm kind of blown away that we're talking about this as a headline. I mean, all of those tasks you just said, Steve, those only require cell phone or smartphone to perform these days. And hear this out. So this young guy named Lo, born in 2006...

He jokes that despite discussions about computer illiteracy among the Gen Z, he's actually really familiar with installing Steam on his computer. And in the meantime... Oh, that's the game website, right? Yeah, the game software and everything. So a lot of the Gen Zs these days, they're not like not knowing how to use a computer. Just...

that they don't know how to work with it. But playing with it, that's another story. And for many of them, they are actually driven to learn about making videos edited on a computer, no longer on a smartphone, although that's like a more popular channel for them to do it, such as Liu we're talking about here.

He's thinking about learning to do video editing on a computer. And that's inspired from his experience watching creative anime edits on social media as well. We see how big of the influence social media is casting on these young people nowadays, that the only way to motivate them to learn to use a computer is through watching swiping on the phones for social media.

And when you come and join the workforce, actually not every job requires you to make videos. You sometimes are required to edit videos.

Word documents. Spreadsheets. Exactly. Use Excel. And also, I read these articles from the U.S. saying that Gen Z new employees don't know how to use the scanner, the printer, etc. And actually, I can be a little harsh on the younger generation sometimes, but I have to say not this time because as...

A human being who's, you know, been through that stage as a newbie in the workplace. We all had to learn how to use those equipment. Yeah. Because nobody's born knowing how to use the printer. Especially, you could argue maybe learning how to use the printer, especially when you're trying to print front and back. Yeah. Let it flip the print in a proper way with the...

Anyway, I'll not go into the secretorial details as such. It takes maybe a little bit more effort than learning how to edit a TikTok video on your smartphone. Yeah.

Here's another kind of fun story from the internet. This person's name is Yang. He was born in 2006, and he said that he encountered computers in elementary school. I love that choice of word. I encountered a computer like an alien life force. Mainly for games, though, apparently. He said he rarely used one after that, except for borrowing a friend's computer for online classes.

His parents don't use a computer, so there isn't one in the house. He's about to start university now, and his family members have said, uh,

maybe you should have a laptop, but he doesn't know what he'll use it for. Yeah, I mean, I was just talking about this with a friend earlier this month, and her son is attending university just this year. And the first assignment for the parents was to buy him like a decent laptop. But all that she heard from her son on how he's going to use the laptop is what game app I'm

going to download, how I'm going to install it and everything. And nothing on completing school tasks and assignment and everything. And the mom was worried. Yeah, it's really kind of shocking, but almost understandable at the same time. This is from the 2021 China National Research Report on Internet Usage Among Minors. Within that report, we found that 90% of underage internet users in the country, they access the internet through their mobile phones primarily.

and only about 40% use a desktop or a laptop computer. Among the devices they own that do connect to the internet, 60% of underage respondents said their mobile phone is the way they do it. Only 10% said it's through a desktop or a laptop. The phone is the internet access point for most young people these days, and the laptop

Well, I'm probably not going to use that for gaming because the screen isn't big enough, right? Maybe the machine isn't powerful enough. So what exactly am I using this thing for? Whereas, you know, an older generation, it was exciting to go to your class with your laptop computer and, you know, type away and do your Word documents and things like that. So if those are the statistics, then we can't be surprised that

young people entering into the workforce don't know how to use programs like Excel or Word or whatever other program might be necessary in an office that is primarily staffed by people that are much older.

Yeah, and here's a 2019 study found that the majority of young Americans rely almost exclusively on smartphone and often find traditional computing tasks unfamiliar or confusing. Well, yeah, I think the Excel software can be

confusing. You need to actually learn how to use it. I don't know how to use it. I've never had a job that required me to use it. I asked you, Heung, the other day, how do I get rid of this box that's around all my words in Microsoft Word? And she, the poor lady, had to stand up from her desk, walk around and go, click here, dummy. That's how you do that. No.

I wouldn't say that. So to be fair, if these young people have never had the opportunity or the necessity to use this in their lives, why would they know how to use these programs? But may I just say that for maybe high school seniors or

or graduates if they don't know how to use all this stuff, sure. But if you go to college, don't you need to complete writing assignments using Word or some of those maybe spreadsheet functions, maybe? Sometimes you might need to use them. What about, you know, so the slightly older, younger adults? Yeah.

Well, guess what? Here in China, schools and universities are increasingly using mobile-friendly software and digital platforms for students, especially since the pandemic. Because this is for reducing exposure to computers among students and make it more accessible for them to do, say, school assignment wherever they can. Like it's the portable device that's supporting them. Literally, they can do things at home without having

a laptop or a decent desk computer there. You mentioned how schools are going to require them to do it, but here schools are doing the other way around, like encouraging, say, we talked about learning machines in previous episodes here on Roundtable where there's AI technology integrated in

learning machines for kids to do like practices and mock exams and everything just on an iPad looking kind of portable device. So yeah, that seems to be the trend, at least here in China. What about elsewhere? There was a study done from the United States by a man by the name of Jason Dorsey.

And he talked about the fact that Gen Z are constantly surrounded by tech, but also that tech knowledge or tech dependency is kind of a complex issue.

There seems to be this assumption from the older generations that Gen Z knows literally everything there is to know about computers. But the fact of the matter is, is that they don't. He did his research and he came out with some statistics. And the research shows that almost 70% of Gen Z feel uncomfortable after eight hours without internet access. And only 22% said they feel stressed.

if they couldn't use their phone at work. And that implies that even though Gen Z grew up in a world surrounded by tech, we kind of look at them as the tech generation. They don't feel, they don't panic if they don't have their phone with them at all times. You know, 70% feel uncomfortable without internet access for eight hours. Eight hours is a super long time with no internet these days for anyone.

So it does imply that despite the fact that they live in a tech-driven world, that they're not completely reliant on it and that they don't know everything about it. Especially if it's a computer that they didn't have to use or own because the smartphone can do so much. But what do you see as the challenges? Does this, if we can call it a skill gap, present in educational and professional settings? Yeah.

Well, you could look at the professional barriers, right? But I'm not even sure if that's a fair thing to say. You know, if you show up to the office as a new employee and you don't know how to use Excel or Word or Adobe programs or things like that, which might be considered essential for many jobs, right?

then there's two ways to look at it. From the company's point of view, don't make the assumption that all of your young new employees will know all of these programs. They should be looking at are they willing to learn and are they eager to learn? That's from a company point of view. From a young person's point of view, maybe it's a good idea to

Become aware of some of these what soon may be archaic programs, but yet are still used in the workplace. Become familiar with some of those programs if you can as you're entering into the workforce. I remember when I first started trying to look for jobs, it's like so common to just simply ignore the line on your CV that says,

When people state that they are fluent with Microsoft words or PowerPoint, Excel, people no longer state that because people like employers, they just assume that when you're applying for a job, a decent job, that's what you are already qualified.

And nowadays, I would imagine young people, upon their submission of their CV, they might need to specify that once again. And also, I'm fluent with, say, smartphone editing, etc. And yeah, like Steve said, professional, on the job hunting perspective, that does matter because nowadays, at least on the real-time office scenario, there's no one who's going to assign a certain amount of time just to teach.

teach you how to use Word, how to edit files and everything. Well, not only that, but the office is changing so much these days. It's almost fluid in terms of the technology. AI is making itself very well known in the workplace nowadays.

And people don't know how to use that perfectly yet. We did an episode of Roundtable where we talked about the fact that one CEO thought, oh, okay, I'm going to introduce ChatGPT and this is going to make everybody super happy. And it did the opposite. It made everybody super stressed and it slowed down their work.

I came across an article from a website called readwrite.com and the article was entitled 10 skills that will be outdated. And they talked about Windows XP admin and Adobe Flash and things like that. But the more interesting part of the story that I found was someone who was writing for the Wall Street Journal. She was a business professor and an entrepreneur.

And she was brutally direct when she talked about the future of the workplace. She said,

even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. And the advice given on that website is for young people when they go to a job interview,

feel free to admit that you might not be an expert in all things AI or something like that, but show your eagerness and your willingness to learn and adapt and be fluid. And that's likely to impress a potential employer rather than saying, I know how to use Microsoft Excel perfectly. That might not impress them so much. That's a really interesting point. Mm-hmm.

When I moved to Korea, I had never ever used chopsticks in my life before. And I ordered Chinese food to... Have you ever heard of jajangmyeon? It's like a Koreanized black noodle dish. Yeah.

Anyway. Okay, potentially that's going to start a cultural war because Chinese people are very... Jiajiao Mian is ours. Yeah, particular about these foods. But yes, Jiajiao Mian is actually Chinese. Yeah, right. From a Chinese restaurant. That's where I ordered it from. Okay. Anyway, I had never used chopsticks before. So you know the wooden chopsticks that come...

wrapped in the paper. Yes. And you have to unwrap them and then you break apart the chopsticks, right? Well, I didn't know you had to break the chopsticks and I had read so many books about, you know, how living in Asia, you have to be really careful about, you know, manners and things like this at the dinner table.

So I didn't know you break the chopsticks. What I did was I pulled them apart at the bottom and put them around the noodle and then picked up the noodle and ate the noodles that way. My coworkers were dying laughing at me and they broke them and they said, here, that's how you use them. Here's my point. Mm-hmm.

I never used chopsticks before in my life. I was not required to use them in my life. We don't use them growing up in Nova Scotia, Canada for any types of food, although that's changed now.

Back to the computer example, if young people have grown up living their lives never using chopsticks, for example, why would you expect them to know how to use them without any training or without any education? Give them a certain amount of time to get caught up with the program and they'll do it. Well, to equip the younger generations with future-ready tech skills, I suppose, what do you think is essential here to set them up for success? Maybe a multi-layered program.

You know, being aware that offices are changing these days. New tech is coming in. Even CEOs don't exactly know how to incorporate it into the office culture just yet. So be aware of that.

But also be aware of the programs that have been in use in the office for a very long time and make use of those a little bit. And also don't forget your soft skills, your personal skills, your ability to get along with other people. So a bit of the future, a bit of the past, and a little bit of you sprinkled in, I would say. That's the recipe for success, I think.

That sounds great. But what about bringing back more teaching of actually how to use computers? Do you think that would just be dwindling too much on the past learning?

But it seems like, you know, in the workplace, it's not going to switch to all AI paperless overnight. Or in a few years, it might not even happen. So what do you do? So I think there's still this increased need, especially for schools and workplaces to engage

at least give some training or give some room for these young people to learn about such fundamental computer skills as well. And upon that, schools and workplaces might want to consider also to put emphasis on digital safety as well, because now that young people, as they are getting in closer contact with social media and all the digital network,

Data privacy, online etiquette and everything, those are also important for them to build at least a healthy online, say, persona as well. So all of these are, I think it should be included in the training as well upon the basic skills.

And by the way, before we wrap up this topic, what you taught me about how to get rid of the box around my words, I've already forgotten and I'm likely to ask you again in the coming weeks or months. And that's perfectly fine, my friend. Instead of saying young people don't know how to use computers, maybe it's more like computers are just becoming outdated for them. In the future, imagine a new device could well replace smartphones.

It's got all the internet access, apps, and features we need, plus longer battery life, faster performance, and most importantly, is ridiculously easy to use. When that happens, and you can bet someone will say, why don't young people know how to use smartphones anymore? Coming up next, could sleep talking be a signal for a stroke waiting to happen? Stay tuned. ♪

Looking for passion? How about fiery debate? Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives? Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understanding is the goal.

It's the Hour of Roundtable with myself, He Yang. I'm joined by Yushan and Steve Hatherly in the studio. What if sleep talking is telling you more than just dreams? A link has been found between sleep disorders such as sleep talking and an increased risk of cardiovascular issues.

This research highlights a connection many haven't considered before. Could improving your sleep habits be crucial for stroke prevention? Yes, here's the new research from Fudan University, which links sleep talking to a higher risk of strokes, with regular sleep talkers being 30% more likely to experience a stroke. And those who talk in their sleep and exhibit rapid eye movements behavior disorder face an even

greater risk, up to 93%. And also the study highlights some connections between sleep disorders, poor sleep quality, and cardiovascular problems, especially among men and those with unhealthy lifestyles. So I had the experience of downloading this sleep facilitating app and record my eight hours of sleep for once. And

Luckily, I didn't record myself asleep talking, but there's this sound of me murmuring or whining as a way of showing that I have this sleep disorder as well. What's the sound? Like...

Do you have a clip for us? Not really. That's something I will share. This is for research purposes only, of course. But here's the question. So what exactly is sleep talking now that we're talking about making sounds during sleep? Yeah, I had to look it up. It's kind of an interesting topic, isn't it? Because this is a human being thing.

And everybody does it. Not necessarily, but it's certainly common. This is what I found. I went to I went to the straight to the source to a website called sleep.com. And this is from 2022. So I think we can trust the information provided.

What I learned, and I think we maybe all knew this a little bit, is that your brain doesn't fully shut off when you're sleeping. Your brain is a computer, of course, and it doesn't fully shut down when we go to sleep at night. That means that a small part of your brain is still awake, making sleep talking in full coherent sentences possible. Although most people don't, when they sleep talk, talk in full coherent sentences.

They call it somniloquy.

talking and it's one of the several parasomnias that can happen while you're busy getting your Z's and parasomnias was a new word for me as well. But that those are sleep disorders that are characterized by disruptive or abnormal behavior during sleep. Other examples would be sleepwalking. Have you ever sleepwalked before? Oh, no, not to my knowledge. Yeah, I only one time in my life. How do you

I went to the fridge and I guess I was getting, I don't know, I was getting something to eat and I just woke up. I woke up there and it's the only time it's ever happened to me in my life. But I have no, and there was no reason for me not to remember. And there was nothing else going on that evening that was weird.

I just woke up in front of the fridge staring at the cheese and ham or something. I don't know. I just went back to bed. Sleep terrors. Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine how terrifying that would be. That's another type of parasomnia. Anyway,

one study found that up to 66% of people have talked in their sleep at one time or another. So again, it's not everybody, but it is a large percentage of the population. Um, even more common in kids, they say up to 50% of children between three and 10 have a bout of sleep talking. Um,

over time. And like I said, it's usually not full sentences, but things like laughing or shouting or whistling or groaning. Those are examples of sleep talking as well. Then how can people identify if they're at risk for stroke due to sleep disorders and what steps should they take to mitigate these risks?

Well, people who talk in their sleep or really exhibit behaviors like kicking or acting out dreams may be unknowingly showing signs of sleep disorders and recognizing these signs

as early as possible can help in seeking a professional diagnosis for it as well. So if you have already experienced such behavioral signs like mentioned above, kicking, acting weird, or remembering to woke up standing in front of a fridge or something, you might want to consider the risk. A simple sleep diary or using sleep tracking devices like I did can help individuals assess their sleep patterns and pinpoint

disappointing disruptions or restless nights as well. And also, if you experience consistent sleep disturbance, it's important to see a healthcare provider who can recommend further tests to assess the risk for cardiovascular issues. Yeah. And we should also say that if you do, and by the way, have you ever woken yourself up?

Oh, totally. Yeah. From your sleep talking? From sleep talking. I don't know. Like for more than one time, I remember I was dreaming about something and I was super angry and I was screaming like, like, like that kind of sound. And I screamed myself awoke. Yeah. Yeah. That's a type of sleep talking. Mm-hmm.

They say no is one of the most common words that people will shout out when they're sleep talking. Yeah. Something bad is happening. It happened to me. Yeah, right. Me too. Something's happening in their dream and they'll shout out no. And then I've done that and woken myself up. Just because you sleep talk from time to time or you have done it in the past does not necessarily mean that you are at risk of some serious disease. Yeah. Yeah.

It may. It may. If it's a serious issue, there may be other risk factors. But the experts say it's relatively common. And if it's happened, you know, a couple of times over a period of time, that might be nothing to be worried about at all.

So should we try to find out some ways to improve our sleep, which in turn might reduce the risk of it leading to some health issues? Regular sleep times, they say going to bed and waking up at the same time can help to regulate your body's internal clock.

leading to better sleep quality. I've heard, and I don't know if this is true, that in the past, as long as you have a regular sleep schedule, then you're on the right path. It doesn't necessarily matter what time you go to bed or wake up, but if it's regular, then that's a good thing.

And also try to avoid stimulants. Anything containing caffeine and or alcoholic drinks and everything, just don't drink those before you try to get a good sleep. And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable. Thank you so much, Steve Hatherly and Yushan for joining the discussion. I'm He Yang. We'll see you next time.