They’re afraid of breaking shit.
Put some technology in their hands, and they’re afraid to do anything.
“I don’t want to break it.” “What if I mess something up?”
So, of course they never learn how to use it. You can’t learn how something works if you don’t rip it apart. There’s a risk that you won’t be able to put it back together, but there’s almost zero risk that nobody will no how to put it back together.
When I was a kid, I had total impunity to break whatever I could. There was no way I was going to do something to a computer that dad wouldn’t know how to fix. Unless I physically destroyed something, there was no puzzle or lock, or mechanical piece that he couldn’t put back together. And guess what? I learned how a lot of shit works.
Sadly, and to be fair to old people, this problem no longer seems as confined to them as it did 10 years ago. I see more and more kids these days afraid to use things, afraid of breaking things, and generally having no idea how anything works.
The truth is, most of the stuff in our world isn’t that fragile. “Broken” is now a relative term. The chance of you rendering something beyond repair, short of shredding it, is about nil. Just about everything can be fixed. Even if you fuck up something serious, like a medical procedure or a legal proceeding, most of the time it’s fixable.
So go break something.
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