Have Tech? Make Sure You Have Kids (or AI)
A couple of weeks back, I had a computer issue. I don’t remember now exactly what kind of computer issue it was, but it was something I couldn’t fix on my own.
Although I tried. I re-booted, several times. I Googled answers, followed prompts, checked in with support groups, went to help websites, had a chat with an automated chatbot and still wasn’t able to fix the problem. I had considered downloading ChatGPT, but instead I took the easier way out: I did what I had promised myself I wouldn’t do but I’ve done time and time again: I asked my kid.
Listen, don’t judge me. I am, in fact, better with tech than a lot of people my age. Well, some people my age.
I know what the F5 key on my laptop does! I can copy and paste from texts to WhatsApp. While it’s true I never learned how to program the VCR, as soon as I got a smartphone I figured out how to record a voicemail greeting. I can even post stories on this very website.
I am my wife’s IT person—which, admittedly, may say more about her than it does about me. But I actually do have friends and relatives who, confronted by the simplest computer or smartphone problems freeze up or start blabbering. Really, that’s not me.
Still, I’m not as good with tech as my kid, and never will be.
My kid is not a kid but a grown woman. She is a grown woman who grew up with new technology. She’s had a cell phone since she was a teen. She’s played around and has worked on computers essentially all her life.
Fortunately, she happened to be home visiting the week I had my computer issue and she said she would be more than willing, as she put it, to take a look. After the look, she did a few things—a couple of which I actually followed and understood—and the problem was solved.
And ever since I’ve been trying to figure out why she, in about ten minutes, was able to fix the problem that I, in a couple of hours, couldn’t.
Younger brains, obviously, have more neuroplasticity; they are more adaptable, which allows them to learn new skills and concepts more easily. That’s why they’re early adopters and that’s why TikTok (remember it?). And that flexibility, of course, decreases with age, making it harder for people of our generation to absorb new information, to learn new technology, to fix problems we may be having with new technology.
That’s part of it. But also, I think, there’s a sort of fearlessness. My daughter, while trying to fix the problem, wasn’t scared that she was going to break something. She wasn’t worried that she’d hit the wrong button on the keyboard and the entire internet would come crashing down. She wasn’t afraid to try.
Over decades, we, on the other hand, have seen too many things go wrong. We’ve developed fears, some healthy, some not. So, sometimes, we’re not willing to take a risk, we’re afraid to try. We concentrate too much on potential consequences, not potential benefits.
When my daughter was fiddling with my laptop, when one thing didn’t work, she tried something else. And when that didn’t work, she kept trying. And when she couldn’t figure out why something was not working, she tried something else. When something doesn’t work for me, I frequently keep trying the same thing again and again. I don’t want to mess with failure.
We can’t always rely on our kids, of course. Sometimes they won’t be at home or they’ll be scrolling on TikTok or are just unfairly pursuing lives of their own. So, to solve a more recent tech problem I had, I just downloaded DeepSeek, the new Chinese-built AI chatbot that’s supposed to be better than ChatGPT and has shaken up Silicon Valley and the stock market.
After I had finally figured out how to log on to it, I asked it my tech question. It replied, instantaneously, with a 350-word answer, including six bullet points. I may ask my daughter to help translate them.