from Hacker News

Is not even owning a laptop the new norm for post-college GenZ?

by morganf on 9/3/23, 3:47 PM with 20 comments

A friend of mine claimed that most Americans under 30, after college, don’t even have a laptop (nor desktop) computer - and more than that, they have no interest in even getting one.

Thinking about it, I realized that, other than college papers, most normal people never type anything at length, and for shorter typing like quick DMs, your touchscreen iPhone is perfectly fine. And most professionals need a computer for work but your job gives that to you. And in this context, doing 100% of your personal computing, internet surfing etc on your iPhone so you don’t even need a laptop makes sense and this the assertion that most don’t have one or an interest in getting one reasonable.

Have you all seen this pattern as well?

While my analysis above makes sense so I can believe the pattern could be true… on the emotional level, I’m still shocked and a touch saddened by it. 20 years ago, I would have predicted that having a computer would be an essential 20 years in the future. And it makes me (at 47) feel old for something I never thought would make me feel old: always taking my beloved Macbook with me!

PS: minor clarification: I put “post-college” in the title. I don’t mean to emphasize “at the moment when you are 22 and graduate college”; rather I mean, just people in their 20s now - with the exception of those in college because presumably you still need a laptop in college.

  • by singedproxy on 9/3/23, 6:35 PM

    I'm a GenZ working with data. Most of my friends also work with "computer stuff" (data, digital design, online marketing etc).

    Most of us have laptops for work only. We usually have conversations about ditching our laptops because we often associate it with the stress of our jobs. Being on a computer for me is almost the same as working, so if I can get away from my laptop I will do it.

    Phones on the other hand are more associated with, well, everything else. Social contact, convenience, leisure (music, books) etc.

    After I finished my master's the first thing I did was ditch my laptop and only used a smartphone for more than a year. Then I got a job with online marketing and had to get a laptop again because typing and having multiple tabs open were more convenient.

    Take all of this as anecdote, however -- this is just me and my social circle. Where I live I know many GenZ who don't even have PCs (some don't even know how to use them proficiently). I however know a few GenZ who are almost PC addicts (gaming, hacking etc).

  • by kypro on 9/4/23, 1:36 PM

    I am amazed how computer illiterate teenagers in my family are. Kids in my generation who grew up in the early 90s were pretty good with computers in general. We had to learn how to deal with BSOD, buggy software and clunky desktop UIs.

    Kids today seem to easily get confused if something doesn't just work, seem to rely more on voice commands to do things, and get easily confused by context menus and other desktop-UI elements not common on touch devices. They're also awful typists.

    None of the teens in my family have a computer, nor do they want one. They have their phones and tablets, but they don't see any need for a computer. Again, I contrast this with my generation where everyone wanted a computer for MSN Messenger and MySpace.

    For me a laptop is my "default" device – 99% of stuff I do I'll want to do on my laptop. Emails, web browsing, even Signal / WhatsApp I'll connect to my laptop because I find it quicker and easier to type. I almost never use my iPad unless on holiday. I think kids today are the opposite – they see phones and tablets as their default device for all that stuff and tend to see laptops and desktops as just work machines for word processing, etc..

  • by Pyrodogg on 9/4/23, 8:50 AM

    Annecdote, but I know of one college grad that recently got hired for devops-ish work and they didn't know how to operate basic functions of a word processor using a keyboard. Things like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V for copy/paste. Interactions so common it shouldn't even matter much which OS you're using, just that it has a keyboard.

    However, If you're swiping over text, pressing, long-pressing to get prompts to copy/paste as on a mobile or tablet, you might never encounter these things or not enough for these operations to be automatic.

  • by KAKAN on 9/3/23, 4:03 PM

    I'm not sure about America, but from the place I'm from (SE Asia), having a laptop after graduation is quite common, and many times required.

    Yeah, more and more people no longer need one, but having some sort of bigger screen helps a lot, even in reading or having multiple things open at once. I'm GenZ, and I can't imagine not having a bigger screen at home, or a laptop if I'm about to do anything more than read DMs.

  • by gardenhedge on 9/3/23, 11:12 PM

    I am not sure if GenZ is an important distinction here. I know millennials who don't own PCs/Laptops and do everything on their phone.

  • by NoZebra120vClip on 9/3/23, 6:57 PM

    Yes. I attended community college 5 years ago. Notebooks were common, but not required. The lab computers were ubiquitous. There was a difference between students in my IT major vs. general ed. The latter tended to only bring a smartphone to class, with eBooks loaded. Me with my notebook, an outlier.

    While it was possible to do college with no smartphone, it was painful, and so I think that students who realized that they were mandatory really just preferred to simplify, less to recharge, less weight, less theft.

  • by softwaredoug on 9/3/23, 4:23 PM

    I think it'd be fine if all I did was google docs, email, etc to just have an iPad.

    TBH This says more about how clunky and annoying the desktop OS is. Do most people care about 80% of what it does? Especially when I just want to edit some docs, browse the web, and use a few apps? What's the argument for having a laptop?

  • by p1esk on 9/3/23, 10:28 PM

    I bought a personal laptop because I value a large screen, and I don't want to do personal browsing/shopping/netflix on my work laptop. I will probably transition to a VR headset for all that within the next 5 years.

  • by KenArrari on 9/4/23, 5:40 PM

    I think if you only need it for typing long things, an ipad with a bluetooth keyboard still works just fine.

  • by paulcole on 9/4/23, 1:56 AM

    I’m 40 and I don’t have an interest in owning a laptop or desktop!

    I have an iPad for at home technology use.

  • by yuppie_scum on 9/3/23, 6:25 PM

    I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call the anecdote of a single secondhand source a pattern.