This past Christmas I bought my 7-year-old nephew a gift he already had. So like a good aunt, I offered him a specific dollar amount and told him to send me a link from Amazon via text. Several days later he FaceTimed me and said, “Teta Ani, I found what I want and it’s exactly the dollar amount you told me I could spend.” Well, being a good aunt, I wanted to teach him a little about finances. I gave him a quick lesson about taxes and explained to him how to calculate the entire cost of the item. Little did I know that the lesson of the day wasn’t about money, it would end up being about technology terms…oh boy!
After the finance lesson I told him he’s allowed to go over the budget I gave him and to go ahead and send me a link to the item he found on Amazon. A few seconds later I get a link to the Amazon home page. This is where I started to realize that his tech knowledge might be a bit lacking. I told him to send me the URL specific to that item. Silence. I called him on Facetime again so I could walk him through it. Yes, I could have told him to use the forwarding link, but now I was completely fascinated and decided to keep moving in the URL direction. After my URL lesson, I asked him to copy that unique URL and paste it into a text message. Silence again. This went on and on until I realized that my brilliant nephew, who understands coding and pretty complex engineering terms, had no idea how to communicate with somebody with the basic tech terms many of us grew up with.
Most people would argue that the kid is only 7, so I checked in with some friends and employees on how much their kids understood the basic terms and I got very similar responses, even from the teenagers. This left me scratching my head and gave me a mission to figure out what kids today actually know, and even educate them however I can.
No matter what age your child is, they will eventually enter the workforce and have to communicate with multiple different generations. No matter how “tech-savvy” they are, it will be important for them to understand some basic terms in order to learn how to work in groups as well as how to organize themselves with the tools our generations use every day. It will be equally important for us to understand their level of knowledge and tech language in order to coach and communicate with them properly. Why not start as early as possible and teach each other now?
Here is our quick survey, please interview your children and share their responses with us. We will gather everything and include some highlights in our next blog which will also include some easy definitions to enhance your child’s tech vocabulary and get them ready for the world!
