18 People Who Have a Super Hard Time Understanding Technology

You’d think that with technology taking our lives by storm, more and more people would know how to use various devices. However, statistics show that about 21% of adults worldwide are technologically illiterate, while only 34% are intermediate. Not very promising, right? These 18 examples prove why people still have a long way to go before they master technology.

• The whole family has used email for years. The other day, I had to send one for my dad, and he said something in the line of “send both files in one email, so you don’t have to pay twice.” @Unknown author / Reddit
• Around 2016, I watched my brother (in his 30s) open Safari browser and click in the search bar to type out “www.yahoo.com” and hit enter and then click in the search bar on Yahoo’s homepage to type “Google”... @prstele01 / Reddit
• I knew someone who once put their credit card in the floppy disk drive to make an online purchase. @ElvishMystical / Reddit

• This was 10+ years ago. Anytime the house Wi-Fi wasn’t working well, my roommate would unplug the Ethernet cable from the modem and the router and hold it up and down (like you would hold a hose to drain the water out) to “let the electrons drain out” so the internet wouldn’t be clogged.
  I tried to explain this wasn’t how Ethernet worked, but he said the cable technician told him to do this, and that was the end of the matter. The thing is, it usually worked because it reset the internet connection, just not for the reason he thought it did. @SmiteIke / Reddit
• At the grocery store I worked at in high school, the store manager wasn’t great with computers and had to call the owner for help. The conversation went like this:
  Owner: You’ll need to go to the desktop.
  Manager: Ok, I’m sitting there. @rob_s_458 / Reddit
• We got my grandma a computer so she could get emails with pictures of her grandkids. It had a sleep mode button and a cover for the monitor. She would diligently put it to sleep every night and place the cover over it. Sincerely thought it needed rest and the lights out. @tristanjones / Reddit

• I worked at the head office of a major UK company. They hired a woman as a website administrator and, on her first day of training, asked her to click on something. She just stared blankly, and they repeated, click on it with the mouse. “The what?” was her reply.
  They had interviewed her for the job, and it turned out that in 2004, she had somehow never used a computer that had a mouse. I don’t think she made it past lunchtime. @MrSpindles / Reddit
• I’ve been working in IT for almost 25 years. A few weeks ago, I had a user tell me their second monitor wasn’t working. I walked over and pressed the power button. Problem solved. @HumpieDouglas / Reddit
• A user was attempting to connect to the Wi-Fi network by following the documentation. Upon reaching the step requiring credential entry, the instructions said something like, “Enter your username and password in this window,” accompanied by a screenshot of the login window.
  The user contacted the help desk, unable to write anything into the window. Eventually, it was discovered that the user was trying to type their credentials into the screenshot itself. @ssiws / Reddit

• My mom was trying to move ~200 pictures from one folder to another. Her approach was to open one picture, do Save As, save it to the other folder, and then delete the original. One by one. When I tried to explain that she could click-and-drag the whole thing over in two seconds, she said, “That wouldn’t be any faster than the way I do it!”
  She would also “save” pictures she found online by copying them, opening Microsoft Word, pasting it in there, and saving it as a .docx file. And she would try to “open” JPEGs by right-clicking on them, choosing “Open With,” and selecting Microsoft Word. @MrWaffles42 / Reddit
• I once had someone who thought their Wi-Fi was down because their wireless mouse had run out of battery and needed new ones, think that’s my favorite. @AttitudeAdjusterSE / Reddit
• Long ago, a Best Buy employee told me that when his town’s store first opened, an elderly lady came into the computer section, picked up the computer mouse and tried to move it across the computer monitor screen asking, “Is this how you do this?” @IdentityEnhancer / Reddit

• I sold a computer on Craigslist about 10 years ago. Keyboard, mouse, LCD monitor, and cables. He took it home and said it didn’t work. The screen would stay blank when he powered it on. When he brought it back, he was pressing the power button on the LCD monitor, not the computer. @Skarth / Reddit
• Seen actual people immerse a laptop (back when they were not waterproof) in water to clean it. @Unknown author / Reddit
• Remember floppy disks? I once saw a grown man using a rubber pencil eraser to “erase the files” on his disk.
  On a separate occasion, during the dial-up modem period of the internet, I saw a Dad yelling at a kid for dialing up the home access number while on vacation in Hawaii. They got a $3200 phone bill at checkout for him playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with friends all night.
  I saw a secretary use white-out correction paste on a printout. @TechnicalW*** / Reddit

• I was helping someone with a website for their small business. I told them I put an “alt” tag on some of the photos that would show text when they put their mouse over it, and to try it out. He literally picked up his mouse and placed it on the screen. @VictoriaEuphoria99 / Reddit
• I was providing remote support for a factory and got a call from the plant manager who was trying to do a tour, he couldn’t log into a system. Turned out that he was typing his username and password, but then not pressing “ok”. He called me to ask how to log in while he had an audience. @phl_fc / Reddit
• My work went fully digital last year. We no longer accept paper submissions. We expected calls for help navigating the system. We didn’t expect the kinds of calls we got.
  I’m directing a guy to where he needs to go on the website. So I tell him, “Ok, scroll down and click the link at the bottom.” He says, “Woah, woah, slow down, I don’t understand all this techno jargon!” I don’t know how to make that any simpler. @Seraph6496 / Reddit

While technology can be lifesaving and groundbreaking, sometimes, people have seen it backfiring. Can you imagine your alert going off, making you think there is a break-in, only to see your cat running around?