I worked with college students fairly recently. They did often reach reflexively for video. But when the written material was good enough, they used it.
College students are the next generation. Most millenials remember dialup or at most a time before mainstream streaming video. College students today have seen their formative years being constantly on with instant access to more material in any format they want than they could ever grasp the concept of.
They handle some things a little differently and sometimes reach for different defaults, but in the end, it isn’t like they are coming from some totally alien planet or anything like that.
And I'm always asking myself what is wrong with me that all that completely does not reflect my practical experiences at all.
One possible skew could be: often it is professors who complain about this stuff, but the type of person who goes on to be a professor tends to be pretty clever and surround themselves with clever friends. So if you are a professor or a highly skilled programmer or something, keep in mind that you probably have a rosy picture of the average competence of the past.
I can clearly see that there are unfortunate patterns, even back then when I was young, and it just got worse and worse. Which is no surprise imho. Of course it propagates. If the parents are already 'social media' addicts, and their friends, and the teachers as well, what shall happen with their children. The issues just 'normalize' - that's what we see, but it doesn't _solve_ them.
The thing is, our societies love to chatter about all kinds of issues and troubles, as long as they are somewhere else or at least the bad guys are far enough away. Something not binding. But as soon as an inconvenient discussion about themselves start, about what they do wrong and what issues we get by them, it turns into silence. So we also do not discuss much about more and more incompetent social media addicts. Since the majority is addicted, and the ground for public discussions is social media only nowadays, who should even start this discussion - and where...
> But when the written material was good enough, they used it.
To some extent, yes, as we all do, they will try to make a good show for you when they feel that there is an audience for that show and it might somehow pay off.
I've read accounts of newspapers and common books rotting people's minds (including the "they aren't talking to each other!" concern,) and ancient Greeks complaining about the next generation.
I can't negate any specific point this way, but I do try to think about history repeating itself whenever I see someone notably younger annoying me.
(Also, the complaints that younger generations have about the older generations are just as ancient.)
What I know is, when I talk to e.g. colleagues, the younger there are, the more they feel like materialized YT clips. And that's not a good thing. Of course I try to compensate for their younger age when I do the comparison. And of course I could be wrong, e.g. biased in some way. But I would sat that I really try to be fair, and I must be veeeery off if you say there are no such issues.
I don't think this is fair to say. Could be said for the generation after me. Maybe not. I think this kind of sweeping generalisation is not fair on any generation though. There are motivated and lazy people in all generations, as there are people with good/bad attention spans.
And what you've said about YouTube might be true, but it wasn't for me. I did not go to YouTube for the community aspect, but only because like I said before I didn't even know that the Arch wiki was an install guide as well.
Sorry to say that, and even more sorry that you'll probably not even understand what I mean, but this actually doesn't need any further comments.
> you have not even considered that there might be some kinds of helpful resources directly from Arch outside of YT.
You're speaking about this as if it happened yesterday. This experience happened over a decade ago. I am not a teenager, and I am now accustomed to reading and actually learning on the internet. Don't fault me or my entire attention span for some minor, naïve behaviour/mistake I made as a teenager.
Another aspect is probably that watching YT clips always has a feeling of being part of something. Some movement, some bubble, some society, whatever. They don't install Arch bcs they want to learn sth, or make some use of the OS. They do it _because_ they found it on YT and they want to be part of it. Maybe they even write comments or make a 'reaction' video. Today it's Arch, tomorrow it's a special pizza recipe from that other guy on Insta. It doesn't really matter.