"learned helplessness" & the tech literacy crisis | Internet Analysis

Comments · 4K

• TI

  @tiffanyferg · 2 years ago · pinned

  legend says no one will read this pinned comment, anyway!! enjoy :-)

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• EM

  @emilykawaii123 · 2 years ago

  &quot;Everyone on this website has piss poor reading comprehension.&quot;<br><br>&quot;How dare you say we piss on the poor.&quot;

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• SO

  @SofiaMartinho · 2 years ago

  This happens in offline life as well. I have a brick and mortar shop. The working hours are written in the door. People still don&apos;t understand why the door is closed. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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• TE

  @Terry-f5d2z · 2 years ago

  I’ve been a preschool teacher and now I’m a teacher for the children’s program at church. I come off as a tyrant to the other teachers because of how much I refuse to do for kids, and how much I stop other teachers from doing things for kids. Things like there’s a circle that needs to be cut out and a six year old says he “can’t” do it, so the other teacher picks it up and cuts it out for him. Then they act like I just don’t want to be helpful. Not true. I’ll sit next to a kid, I’ll talk to them, I’ll describe the process, I’ll model it with my OWN circle (or whatever), but I won’t do it for them.

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• DE

  @Dev-ld4gi · 2 years ago

  When I graduated college with a BA in history, I felt a little insecure that there was no way I could possibly remember the thousands of dates, names, and events that I learned. After three years out of college, I realized the actual content of what I studied was not extremely important. Rather, it’s the resourcefulness I learned. The ability to take a topic and research it with credible sources to ultimately convey my ideas to others. So, sure, I might not remember the details of the Battle of Saratoga, but in a few hours I could refresh my memory with effective research. I’m so lucky to have had the education I had, and, when I become a teacher in the future, I will reinforce this idea again and again: It’s not <b>what</b> you learn in school that matters. School should teach you <b>how</b> to learn anything you want.

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• ER

  @erylaria398 · 2 years ago

  Reading comprehension is SUCH an undervalued skill. I work in tech support. The number of times i write an email with detailed troubleshooting steps, asking for detailed replies, and then i get back 3 word replies like &quot;didn&apos;t work&quot; is TRULY STAGGERING. Like. HOW did it not work? At WHAT POINT? Did it not work? Did you get an error message? Aaaahhh!!! <br><br>And these are not private consumers. These are other IT professionals. They just DON&apos;T READ THE ENTIRE EMAIL. Nothing about my job makes me angrier than that.

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• OO

  @oohmyclumsyheart · 2 years ago

  As a millennial I think I have that stereotypical “people pleaser” mentality which makes me NEVER ask for help… so seeing people asking the stupidest questions online gives me secondhand embarrassment

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• CO

  @colleenorourke6934 · 2 years ago

  As an Elder Millennial high school teacher, it absolutely destroys my soul that I am apparently forever doomed to spend my days explaining to my Boomer/X coworkers <b>*AND*</b> my Z/Alpha students how to rotate a PDF and attach it to an email.

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• CO

  @cowgrll · 2 years ago (edited)

  My personal three horsemen of the apocalypse are weaponized incompetence, learned helplessness, willful ignorance. The fourth horseman is a free space that could at any time be filled by lack of critical thinking skills, misogyny, racism, bigotry, hubris, etc.

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• DJ

  @DJFelixChester · 2 years ago (edited)

  One bit about the “there is no virtue in struggle” point. Sometimes there’s no virtue in a particular struggle, but there is a purpose to it. I had a wood carving teacher, who when I started, made me wear leather gloves for everything and didn’t let me take them off for the whole instruction period. That included using my reference book. I asked him why, and he said, “because you’ll get so annoyed at trying to use the book you’ll just start remembering.” I took that same philosophy when trying to improve my typing speed and got a keyboard with blank key caps, and almost doubled my typing speed even with dyslexia. When I’m learning a new system at work with new shortcuts I purposely place the notes under my arm where it is inconvenient to constantly reference them, and I get used to them very quickly. Arbitrary difficulty is just gatekeeping, but sometimes the difficulty is the skill.

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• RO

  @roger.roomba · 2 years ago

  I studied fake news and digital media literacy in my master&apos;s program, and it turned the internet into a very stressful place for me. I can&apos;t help but see all the false information, lack of critical thinking and awareness, and unwillingness to even attempt to push back on or question the narratives large creators, algorithms, and other channels try to shove down our throats. It is distressing and has me very worried about the future. I&apos;m about to give up on social media entirely.

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• DM

  @dmitrieffect · 2 years ago

  I&apos;m an academic librarian and sometimes people ask me &apos;do we still need librarians? I thought you could just look everything up online now&apos; and I explain that Google actually helps keep me employed because I spend a lot of my time teaching people how to Google properly (and then hopefully eventually getting them on to other sources of information and using their critical thinking skills etc) 😅

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