Rise Of The Tech-savvy Parent

Are younger people really digitally superior?

- Angela Misri

I can see how it would be unsettling to be laughing with your friends, far from the eyes and interruptions of the adult world, when suddenly your mother takes over your computer screen and demands that you call her. What is it like to be a teenager whose mom remotely turns offyour technology when you refuse to answer your phone, text, email, and FaceTime?

I’m the person who fixes my teen’s smartphone when they can’t figure out why their apps have disappeared. I’m the person who set up a Tumblr for them to upload the stop-motion videos I also taught them how to make. And I’m the one they will come to when their first job requires them to learn the latest software.

It’s a common cliché: if you need to figure out a new gadget, you hand it to the youngest member of the family. The media has been publishing articles about adults’ apparent tech ignorance for nearly two decades. In 2000, The Economist claimed the “family tech guru” was “far more likely to be a teenager than the father of the house.” Perhaps they should have checked with the mother, because that scenario has never been true in my home, where I live with my husband and sixteenyear-old kid. I’m convinced that I’m not the only nerdy parent out there who knows more about (and is actually more interested in) technology than my child does. (A few years ago, I bought my kid a Raspberry Pi as a cool entry into building a computer. My kid didn’t find the software as exciting as I did, and I ended up having to program it myself.) In fact, I don’t think my kid’s lack of tech savvy is at all unique among the younger crowd.