A study shows that 90 percent of people in their studies don’t know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page!
“I can’t believe people have been wasting their lives like this either! It makes me think that we need a new type of class in schools across the land immediately. Electronic literacy. Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we’re looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL F thing.”
(via frankchimero)
i just taught my mom about ctrl+f yesterday and my husband thought it was INSANE that there was anyone on the planet who didn’t know about ctrl+f. 90% does seem a little steep.
Sep 12th, 2011 / 10:47 am
This doesn’t really surprise me. Although it’s not confined to older generations, people who didn’t grow up with computers everywhere seem to take issue with there being many common themes between various platforms.
Picking up a new piece of software or video game is rarely problematic for me, but my mother was entirely lost when she bought a new digital camera that came with different proprietary software for photo management.
I think we’d go a long way to look at how we teach computers in grade school. Stop teaching kids “Word” and “Excel” – start teaching them word processing and spreadsheets. Let them know most every program has shortcut keys and often they’re common from one piece of software to the next.
Sep 12th, 2011 / 11:30 am
omg. thanks for the tip! ha, ha. and i’m not an old lady in a wheelchair… yet. ;)
Sep 12th, 2011 / 1:37 pm
90%? Wow, I can’t live without Ctrl + F..sometimes when I go to the supermarket and I’m looking for something specific, I wish I could do Ctrl + F to find it……
Sep 12th, 2011 / 8:24 pm
There is a class like that – it’s called “library class” in your local school. What once used to be just books and card catalogs really does teach digital literacy these days and we work really hard at it.
Signed,
a Proud School Librarian.
Sep 13th, 2011 / 12:32 am
People at my work didn’t know about CTRL + C so I highly doubt they know about CTRL + F either.
Le sigh.
Sep 13th, 2011 / 3:30 am
while I fall into the same crowd that would have that mindblown-“that’s insane” reaction initially,
is knowing a keyboard shortcut that relevant today? It isn’t as much as say, a decade ago.
I bet alot of those 90% would either recognize a web-style search field in a top corner, or a magnifying glass icon on a toolbar instead. And that is just fine as interfaces change. I mean, what about the whole keyboardless tablet/phone UIs?! what the hell is CTRL and F on those right?
Sep 15th, 2011 / 11:31 pm
i recently encountered a coworker (mid-20s) who had no idea that Ctrl-F existed for web browsers. and to clarify, she literally didn’t know it was possible to search a web page. it was rather frightening, because she’s been in interface design for years.
Oct 4th, 2011 / 3:07 am