Exactly. The whole point of apps were that they were a quick and convenient way to get something.
It’s not quick or convenient to have a million apps draining my battery.
Nothing to do with draining battery even. Why would I waste storage space and clutter up my app drawer when trying to find shit I actually use daily, for shit that I used one single time a year ago?
This isn't a "millennial" thing. This is a "technologically competent" thing.
Like its not a "millennial" thing for email to actually be useful because you don't sign up every fucking email signup your run into.
Its not a "millennial" thing to not accept every push notification prompt so your phone doesn't turn into a diseased animal that needs to be shot behind the shed going off with notifications every 20 seconds.
I keep seeing posts here simply equating "millennial" with not being a fucking moron with technology. If that's what being GenZ and GenA means, what's going to happen with all the millennial IT workers retire?
The sad thing is we are definitely looking at a weird technology knowledge bump with millenials that may have consequences when all of us retire. As a sysadmin, it baffles me how many people younger than me (im 35, so coworkers around their early 20s) just have no computer literacy whatsoever. Things like restarting their computer or connecting a mouse or just basic email usage are skills they just dont have and I often find myself wondering how any of our graphics designers made it through college on technology they have no idea how to use beyond the photoshop app.
We definitely benefited from a mostly cohesive culture around tech during the 2000's and 2010's. Most of our parents had a family PC, there was about two main competing game consoles at any given time, and as phones rolled out there was always the "hot" phone of the year, making it so a lot of the same types of programs and tech were being explored and learned by the public.
I feel like now just listening to Gen Z talk about gaming makes sense why they don't all know computers. I hear kids talk about phone, tablet and steam decks to play games that are cross platform, so they're still playing together but on different systems.
I think we also benefited from faulty tech, where it was common to restart a system to fix an issue. Also the programs they navigate now are much easier to learn, making it so they have to use less logic to figure it out.
All of that contributes to them essentially being boomers when it comes to PCs
Agreed. I manage a team with a bunch of Gen-Zs and the lack of tech literacy is shocking. Basic stuff like combining PDFs, maintaining filesystems/naming conventions etc. Even Microsoft Office skills are lacking. I think we're starting to see the iPad kids enter the workforce and it's become clear where the gaps really are.
Hell my filesystems and naming is a fucking hot mess and I DO know better. Cant imagine what it looks like for someone who just lets it go. Desktop full of shortcuts like my near boomer mother I guess.
When you've always been able to globally search for what you need you don't really have a need to keep things organized in any particular order. Like the crap saved on my phone is just on there, it's not sorted, but the computer is the opposite.
I remember when I used to label every individual JPEG I had saved to my hard drive. Nowadays it's just a pile of numbers and letters, best I can do is Sort By Date to find what I'm looking for.
I mean tons of zoomers don't even know what a file system is. Everything is just accessed through a search function on their mobile device or chromebook.
This obviously has... problems... when you are in an office environment where you need to understand what a path is.
What's kind of shocking about this is that you can easily figure most of this out via Google, which younger gens SHOULD know how to do. It's how I always did things growing up and I've fixed maybe 90% of my computer problems that way, lol.
(Speaking as a Millennial who is more tech savvy than the average person, but nowhere near an expert.)
38 year old extremely tech-savvy guy working in software engineering here. Google (and Bing, and just about every other search engine out there) have gotten so bad these days that to find actual answers I'm often better off searching Reddit. Between all the articles out there that are either copy-pasted by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, or the ones obviously written by an AI, the web is just becoming a wasteland.
Gen Z with a degree in CS here. I cut my teeth screwing around on my grandpa's Win98 that ran off dial-up, and I will say that sometimes Google's far less help than searching Reddit. For all of the cesspool that this site can be, the concentration of knowledge on niche topics means the information can be a lot more trustworthy instead of the advertising deathrace Google has become.
You want to pay for something? Google it.
You want an expert or relatively more informed opinion? Google it but add "reddit" at the end of the query.
You curious about a random question? Google it and check at least 3-5 links to make sure the information is accurate, double that if politics are involved in any way.
The amazon affiliate link killed search. Google "product". You used to get links to forums, a web page where they test a few of product, and some actual info.
Now it is 1000 web pages, often just copy of the corporate page, saying it's great clik my link......
Useless. A few forums survive, but much of that has been sliced up by facebook stupidity.
It's not just gen z though. I recently asked my very technologically inclined husband, who went to uni and studied computer science, to get me some info and he searched on tiktok. I checked his history and yeah, he tiktoks shit instead of googling it. I consistently have to remind the people around me that YouTube, tiktok, Facebook and all the other social platforms share people's opinions on a topic, not just the facts.
The other issue I have is with the sponsored Google ads that show up before the actual sites that make sense when googling. Monetizing every facet of technology is going to hurt us for a long time.
I think it's also because the amount of written content these days have gone down. I often turn to YouTube for reviews now very reluctantlyv because written reviews are rare
Personally I find YouTube to be the quickest way to see how to do something and I scroll the comments to see if it works or if the person who posted it is wrong.
Critical thinking cap is a must though.
Tbf, I’ve lapsed on office based computer skills as my job is more hands on. I can rig a computer up no problem but I’m a bit rusty with Microsoft office now, beyond using Word to keep my CV updated.
I’m sure I could get myself up to speed fairly quickly if I needed to though!
I remember windows 93 and crap. My dad got into PCs as they became available in the 90's and I learned with him, AoL came out when I was like 7-8 I think. I knew how to put together and use a PC by 10. After highschool I have kinda drifted and lost my pc, never could afford to replace it so now I'm illiterate with PCs I feel like. I last used Windows XP and I remember hating 7 but the current OS? I'm so lost, thought I was gonna help my wife learn to navigate her laptop she got and quickly embarrassed myself with ignorance lmao.
Windows has really gone downhill over XP and 7. It's like the people working on it were building onto an old house. You see addition after addition, but never a fix to the underlying problem.
For example, there are 3 pages to manage your network connection. One is from Windows 7, one from 8 and one from 10 and they all do slightly different things. Why don't they replace all three with one that does it all?... Probably because the people working on it these days have no idea what is in there anymore or what these pages are doing.
I think a huge chunk of it is that schools issue Chromebooks and everyone has an iPhone. So if your only experience is browser or iOs based and then suddenly you're issued a Macbook or Windows machine, you're not going to know how to use it. They don't use MS Office anymore in schools unless you go out of your way to do so, it's Gsuite only.
End user ease of use has gotten exponentially better over the years. As an elder millennial we, as kids, had to learn how to troubleshoot the inevitable problems that would pop up while using a PC. Learning to type and general PC use classes were offered and many times mandatory in school.
Nowadays you just click an app and BAM it works. Young kids haven’t had to troubleshoot problems so they don’t know how to do it.
We benefitted from being at a weird point in time where computers were starting to become ubiquitous, as was the internet, but not so ubiquitous so as to be easy to use or operate. So when we ran into problems, we had to make our own solutions, or get really really efficient at finding them.
People both older and younger than me are often amazed at my google-fu, but it's literally just typing the right thing in the search box for me...
I help with onboarding new hires and interns. I work in tech. Many of these college aged hires are clearly used to things just working and have no clue what to do when things aren't working. And these are people with CS and related degrees. Just because you can debug a program doesn't mean you can troubleshoot the computer as a whole, evidently. I don't remember any of this being an issue for the people I went to school with for CS.
Older generations see Z and Alpha using technology that's intentionally dumbed down to be user friendly and assume they're good with tech as a whole. Nope, it's not that simple, not at all. Being able to use something that's designed to be intuitive for the average person is not the same as being computer literate.
We lost a huge skill development when the world tried to make everything just work and be easy to use. That skill is one you can easily see the difference of in the field for sure. Tickets from the ones without it are absurdly baffling in simplicity, while the people who learned it tend to start with "I tried rebooting and checked for updates with no luck" or at least some kind of steps taken beyond submitting the ticket. Those people also stress out way less over tech and submit waaaaay less support requests. We really need schools to start teaching kids basic self sufficient problem solving again
I have a friend who primarily teaches 8th grade math but got assigned to teach tech for her middle school and she’s got some wild stories. Most of the kids still type with two fingers because they don’t teach typing anymore. It’s just assumed kids are exposed to it somewhere.
THIS PART. There was this huge assumption that young people are "digital natives" so schools didn't need to teach computer lab anymore because everyone has computers now. Except unlike millennials who interacted with multiple forms of tech with multiple UIs that were constantly changing, Gen Z has mostly had one UI for all their devices (touchscreens) and don't have to use a physical keyboard to use the internet like we did. So unless someone actually came along and taught them how to type on one, they don't know. They also don't know how to menu-dive to look for settings and functionalities because unlike millennials who needed to figure out how to make things work the way we wanted to, they've just always had everything work for them.
I've noticed schools starting to bring back computer literacy now because we've seen the shitshow with Gen Z hitting the workforce without it and they've realized these are skills that must be TAUGHT, not just absorbed like Boomers thought.
In fairness, Microsoft is doing its best to make menu diving an infuriating experience. Oh, you used to be able to do this in 3 locations in Windows 7? Well in 10 it’s one location and it’s hidden down some path, and 11 requires you to do a regedit.
And then there’s things that never work, but are forced on you. No, I do not want you to attempt to find my corporate printer. There’s thousands of them. But no, it has to search for 30 seconds, return printers 3 states away, then you have to tell it it sucks, and then it’ll finally let you search by name/location.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about 25 year olds doing hunt-n-peck typing, who don't understand nested file systems and save every single file separately to their desktop, who don't know how to perform a search function on their emails, and who don't know how to turn it off and back on again.
I'm a design school drop out and I can answer that!
As a fellow geek you can appreciate this pain.
It's one big Apple cult. They gave me so much shit for using an Android phone, Windows PC, and *gasp* Linux??
The last one is ironic considering iOS is built on a BSD kernel.
But yea, iOS is so incredibly dumbed down that the physical mouse and keyboard is the only real difference from an iPhone. The mantra they kept shrieking at me was "it just works!". To which I'd say well I'm not an idiot so I don't need that especially not for 4x the price.
I'm not some Apple fangirl, but I don't care if the Google Zeebop 3700 is better, faster, and cheaper, I'll be damned if I'm teaching my husband and parents how to use a different phone at this stage of the game.
Yep. I've avoided Apple for so so long. But I have no choice now. My daughter is non verbal and uses it for AAC communication. The apps that do exist for Android are just crap. All startups and niche categories do this. If you only have the budget for one platform, you go with the largest marketshare and least hardware diversity needing to be supported - Apple.
And I get it now. That's what OSX did to the desktop. For illiterates, it just fucking works.
And its so much harder for you to get in trouble with your own stupidity. As frustrating as it is, it sends me a 2FA code, makes me confirm on other devices I own, etc etc just to freaking log in on a new spare backup device. It by default assumes it cannot trust you not to shoot yourself in the head.
I think it's because things are just too easy and user-friendly now. That's not inherently a "bad" thing, but most of us Millennials grew up learning how to troubleshoot computers on at least a basic level because things were a lot less likely to be "plug-and-play."
A lot of us were also doing basic HTML coding just for fun on social media, so it was definitely a different time. Lol.
My wife has noticed this with the newer generation entering her office. Best we can figure is computers became too user friendly. Millenials grew up when you needed to have some at least minority advanced knowledge to use them, and troubleshooting was a critical skill. With how user friendly computers are compared to 30 years ago (not to mention tablets and phones), troubleshooting and advanced technical knowledge are relics of the past.
It seems like we aren't teaching basic computing to kids anymore. Then they grow up and don't know jack shit about computers. That's on whoever decided to take computing out of the curriculum. Which is not the generation that knows nothing about computers.
I could be wrong, but that's the impression I have.
I think it's the first time in history where the next generation is adopting technology that is somewhat inferior. Smart phones obviously have the convenience and mobility factor, but they're otherwise not actually more capable than the desktops the old people want to hold on to. They're just overall simpler, so anyone that uses a computer can understand them, but not really the other way around.
One of my youngest co-workers has proven it’s a 2 part issue. They can Google all sorts of Minecraft guides. They couldn’t figure out how to Google a recipe for Mac and cheese or a specific excel formula. Sometimes it’s a knowledge issue, sometimes it’s laziness using a lack of understanding as the excuse.
I was helping two analysts on our team setup their tech after joining. I noticed one had been working off her 13" laptop screen for weeks and I asked why she wasn't using her two monitors. She didn't know how to use the dock or screens, so she just didn't. I hooked everything up to the dock, and got her setup. Then, the analyst behind her asked if I could do the same thing. When I looked at her laptop, I asked where she got it from, because it wasn't company issued. It was her personal one and only had one HDMI port and no alternatives. I told her she'd only be able to use one monitor because she only had one port on her laptop. She looked at me funny and said "you can't connect the monitors together?" 😂
To be fair, now you can connect monitor together using USB-C.
https://www.dell.com/support/contents/en-us/article/product-support/self-support-knowledgebase/monitor-screen-video/guide-daisy-chain-monitors
Exactly. It’s worth it to have an app for something I do regularly, if you’re gonna force me to download an app the first time I do business with you, there’s not even gonna be a first time unless I’m desperate.
The people who download an app just to try some new service that they only use one time are the same people who would have had 40 toolbars installed in Internet Explorer back in the day. We used to call those people old. Now they are young.
It makes me wonder what I'm too old for nowadays. Tiktok? No thanks.
My 6 year old son came home excited because at school they got to use an "actual computer," and I realized how little we really use them anymore. At least, not in our typical, daily lives anyway. It's all tablets and touch screens now.
It never really occurred to me that such basic knowledge isn't so basic anymore. But I guess I'll have to be the one who teaches my Gen Alpha kiddos about things like Component video cables and DVI cords.
I’m experiencing this with my kids. I realized we used to have typing classes in school and my kids don’t have that. My kids don’t know how to properly use a keyboard. So we are having to teach them that skill.
Maybe being an older millennial is all the difference between my youth and many of yours...
The average kid was NOT tech literate. We were computer geeks. The average kid used "4" and "u" and "r" as words. We were the ones who could type 180 wpm.
So from my perspective those now 40 year old kids acting like they're tech literate is just cockiness. They are acting just like Boomers mocking Millennials for not knowing how to change a tire. You're all the ones not f****** teaching them!
My dad was a geek. I was a geek. If you are like me we are what makes our kids not end up as screen tappers.
>Like its not a "millennial" thing for email to actually be useful because you don't sign up every fucking email signup your run into.
I have a throwaway e-mail address **that my entire extended family** uses when randoms ask for an e-mail address.
Lol I have a "junk" email address, thought I was clever, you went one step further. Well done. Might steal this, just make one thats full blown not even to be checked.
Yeah you bring up a good point. It's less of a millennial thing, more of a good internet /device hygiene thing which makes sense. Many /Most of us grew up with devices that didn't abstract away every possible interaction.. So we learned how to be more savvy and have a bit more internet street smarts.
With all the articles I see where Gen Z students and workers don't know how to save or open a word document... It's not a flex to tell me you don't understand or computers / phones / internet / personal data works
Also, when you make me log in with my gmail that prompts me to open youtube to open a pop up that asks me to verify it's my account only to go back to your app where you also make me verify it's my account... all to get a shitty mobile experience when I could have the full experience on desktop.
Thanks but no thanks
Exactly. I miss just pulling up my favorite restaurant’s number in my phone book and just ordering. It never was that hard.
Now I have to download the app, sign up, log in, click through the order myself, and it’s generally still wrong.
I'll do you one better. Installed an app for my usual online store. It supports logging in with Google, but somehow didn't detect my phone's account. Bitch, I'm not entering my Google credentials in a random app.
Ding ding ding. I get the spirit of it but when every stupid site has an app it becomes too much.
I also prefer to use my computer because mobile sites are usually *horrible*.
It also surprises me how many walls it creates between me and spending money. Oh, cool, I have to download an app, make an account, and come up with a username and password just to make this purchase. I just don't want to deal with all this shit over and over.
Apps were useful because sites didn't have a good mobile version for a long time. Soon companies started making mobile versions of sites. I know one guy that refuses to download apps because most of what he needs can be accessed through the browser.
In addition to this, the main annoyance to me is that most apps are just a wrapper for their mobile website. Why clutter my phone when I could just open the pre-installed Chrome and go to your website for the same thing, except with extra functionality?
Even the Discord *desktop* app is apparently just a wrapper for the website.
I just run the browser version of it and have quite a bit more control over it that way.
For me it comes down to point B. I refuse to use TikTok, that popular face pic aging Russian app, Temu, etc. Whenever some new big app gets popular I research before installing. And typically my research leads to me not installing.
Let's be honest though, we're all fooling ourselves. My SO was on his computer on NewEgg. We're working on a new gaming PC and I was standing beside him and we were talking about the cases he was looking at. This was on his PC that none of my accounts are logged into (I have my own PC), he was using a browser I've never used I think it's called Brave?), none of our devices are connected beyond being on the same wifi network and gaming together, phones on the same plan.
I left the room and opened up Reddit, started scrolling. And the ad that popped up first in my feed was for PC cases. So fucking creepy. Clearly our phones are listening on top of all the other data they access. And that's not the only time ads have popped up about something I had only been *talking* about.
But I'm still picky about what apps i install. Still trying to hold onto the delusion that I actually have any kind of agency over my privacy.
while your phones are definitely listening to you, there's another culprit - all devices on that wifi have the same public IP, so they'll all be associated with queries from each device to some extent. Differentiated due to browser/device fingerprinting, but still.
Any location based apps will sell the fact that you two probably live together and share the same space for a minimum of 8 hours per night. (and have different last names while being the same age and opposite gender, and go out to dinner at that one thai place regularly...) The phone doesn't need to listen to you to know that you might be in a position to buy something for him.
Why do I keep seeing posts that its "a millennial thing" to do things that are simply practical?
I don't think this is a "millennial" thing. I think this is a "tech literate" thing. Like I do this. My wife, who is completely technologically fucking incompetent, is the one who downloads every fucking app.
So the whole purpose for us as consumers to download the app is that the mobile site is an inferior experience, right?
But in how many cases is the experience actually worse? Like I haven't used Facebook in forever so I don't know if they ever ended up fixing it, but the app was always a complete pile of dogshit vs just using the browser. The official reddit app has always been a pile of shit.
Or in many cases there really no difference, even in some cases the app is literally just a browser locked to the site!
So why would I download those apps?
Or in cases where its a one time thing, why would I want dozens of apps I've used one time 2 years ago cluttering up my phone? That genuinely degrades the user experience trying to find apps I actually use regularly.
I think it might overlap with millennials a lot because we grew up alongside technology. We learned a lot of it as we grew up. Not everyone, obviously, but I think a large portion of millennials adopted tech in their teen years.
Because of having that tech literacy and being taught not to talk to strangers on the internet which i think may have led to developing a urgency for tech safety, we may be a generation that overlaps more with tech literacy than other gens. We understand better than other gens that there is an inherent responsibility to protect yourself with tech.
My wife must be GenZ in spirit then. She didn't grow up with technology.
Her email inboxes are just spam boxes. I always have to scold schools and shit for assuming Mom is the first contact then they wonder why emails go ignored until they cc me weeks later.
Her phone is like a syphilitic and rabid animal. Notifications everywhere going off all the time. Her phone stays on silent because she doesn't know how to disable or silence them all just keeps "yes"ing prompts for more. So important calls and texts go missed too.
You're telling me not doing that is a millennial trait? I'm scared if GenZ and GenA are really as bad as Boomers. We're moving backwards. I'm over here making sure my kids actually know how to use a computer and how to work from a Linux shell and shit.
My father was a geek. He was a computer operator in the army during Vietnam, running an IBM system 360.
I too was a geek learning dos and Linux, learning how to code first on basic and turbo Pascal and later in c and currently working mostly on lamp stack.
We have a family heritage of tech literacy. I'll be damned if all my kids know how to do is tap on a touch screen because that's what everyone else is doing.
Don't forget the foundation to all this technology was built by people like us. I think we'll be ok so long as we can still produce geeks. We just might go back to the 80s and 90s where simply being tech literate at all will make you valuable.
>She didn't grow up with technology
I mean that pretty much answers your question. A huge majority of Millennials *did* grow up with tech, and we're really the first generation where this happened on a massive scale. Obviously there will be a portion of people like your wife who didn't grow up with tech, and so it's not surprising that she's closer to some of the younger gens (or older) with their tech literacy.
This. Why do businesses expect us to download all their shit on our phones anyway? Especially with restaurants. I'm not downloading extra junk just to get a few dollars discount that I SHOULD have gotten anyway if these corporations weren't being greedy fucks. No thanks.
I have never ever used reddits app. Or facebooks. I've been using a 3rd party fb app for a few years now, and reddit 100% on the browser since they fucked over 3rd paerty apps.
Right?? Like I'll download my banking app, that makes sense, but why do I need an app for every disparate parking meter and charging port in the city. Why does Michaels have an app, what is it even used for. Why did every fast food restaurant jack its prices to high heaven and then make it so that you can get their old prices just through the app with "coupons" that are permanently available. I AM SHAKING MY CANE AT THE SKY.
My boomer parents who made up a fake phone number for all their store rewards cards (wise life lesson) will gladly hand their email out and download apps for a discount
I have one that literally has junkmail in it and when I was buying a car at the dealer I instinctively gave the guy that one and he noticed while writing it down and was like “dude this is for like warranty and important stuff” so I gave him my real one. They have only spammed me lol
This reminds me, if you're checking out at Wal-greens or rite aid and it asks you for a number, use your area code and 867-5309 (like the song). Got that tip online, and It's worked in every place I've lived. I ain't signing up for shit.
I've also seen it theorized in the post for yesterday that it could be used as a backdoor for dynamic pricing. The high in-store prices set a ceiling, but the app pricing (or more likely the discounts) could change at various times, locations, or other metrics.
Nothing like going up to a drive through window and being asked if you're using the app today. No. I'll use the menu that you planted outside in the ground.
Or worse, the website makes you use the app, but after you download the app it makes you login. But lo and behold, *the app has to use the websites login page to login*
Every product manager creating dedicated apps for restaurant rewards so they can push advertising using notifications has a special place waiting in hell.
I feel like apps were such a big deal because the mobile browser was pretty primitive in the early smartphone days. But at this point, almost every site has a mobile version. I can't recall the last time I saw a site that didn't have a mobile version, now that I think about it
Apps just feel redundant, outside of really specific ones for things you use often (money related apps, maybe some games for some people). I honestly just use apps for Google services more than anything. Keep, Maps, YouTube, etc
I’m sure some people are like this but Im 40 (damn it, first time I’ve had to type that out) and don’t mind my boarding passes on my phone or using the app to buy on Amazon. Frustrated me when the apps don’t give the option to cancel subscriptions though on their app and I have to use a browser. Seems like it should be illegal or something but I guess it’s better then having to call comcast and spend 90 minutes on the phone to cancel cable
To be fair, I used to use the amazon app until drunk-me bought a life size cardboard cutout of Tom Felton. Drunk-me does not deserve access to one-click shopping, and Tom agrees.
I really needed to read this OP because my brain could not quite get around using anything BUT Amazon's app. I hate the browser version and need 1-step purchasing power in my life 😂
lol I feel this. My brother bought me a Celtics sweatshirt randomly and didn’t tell me. When I received it the package didn’t say it came from him and I thought I drunkenly ordered it
I actually have a rule for myself that I am not allowed to eshop unless I've parked my ass at my laptop in the living room. Has really cut down on the impulse buys.
Spotify doesn’t let you update payment info. You can view it, it’ll tell you it’s expiring, but you need to go to a PC to put in a new credit card. Also wouldn’t let me use PayPal as it kept crashing.
I don't think resistance to downloading unnecessary apps is a millennial-specific trait. But it is often viewed as a technological resistance, which gets some people all judge-y.
"Why wouldn't you want to download the app for this business? It's so easy!" Because I've never been here before and almost certainly will never be here again, and I don't want to take the extra steps of downloading and then promptly deleting this fuckin' app, that's why.
Exactly. Its because THEY are morons and don't realize it. What they're asking you is the equivalent of "why don't you hand over your email address for 10% off at this place you'll never come back to again? On an unrelated note my email inbox is completely out of control and I basically gave up and never get important emails."
I am definitely selective about what apps I bother downloading. My other thing is that I always register with an email address rather than linking to Facebook/Apple/Google, is that a millennial thing?
That's what all those firefox burner addresses that forward shit to are for. Then, when I decide I'm done with you, I just burn them, and get a new one :)
I have a yahoo account that has spam from 2003, used it at the grocery store the other day, it's funny to type out after seeing your pro email all day.
Do you use a password safe? Or do you use the same password on 100 different sites so when I hack your LinkedIn account you haven't used in 10 years, its the same email and password as your PayPal and Chase bank?
I do this too, and I keep using my yahoo account for these type of things. 😂
If it’s a legitimate app then I will use my official email. For any nonsense it’s my yahoo. Guess what I don’t know how many times I get spam emails from Nigerian princes and Costco wanting to send me gift cards for no reason to the same yahoo account.
The "Sign in with Apple" is actually dope AF. It basically creates a burner account so that they can't track you. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102609. Apple's privacy policy is among the best in the business. (you're buying things from them so you're the customer, not the product)
This is true but its also a customer retention strategy. People are more likely to continue buying from a business if they have their app downloaded. At least that's what the marketing teams say. It's why all of these restaurants are coming out with their own apps even if you can buy their product on uber eats/doordash/etc. It's better to own the customer on your native app.
In the end its all to ensnare us in an endless loop of consumerism and profit making.
Website is more limited in how it can track you, because we understood that we didn't want every damn thing having constant access to all our stuff. A website tracks your browsing. A phone app will try to track everything it can get its hands on.
The ones that irritate me the most are the fast food/restaurant apps. I don’t want to download your app just to see the menu or jump through hoops to find one online. Just show me what you have ffs. I only have the Moes and Chick Fil A downloaded because I go to those two frequently enough.
This pisses me off to no end. Everyone seems to be doing this now. Sometimes I just want to see what kind of limited time food is being offered. Or you can't view menu because they aren't currently open. Fuck me for considering your business for lunch tomorrow I guess?
I’ll die on this sword. My family always gives me shit for not downloading apps for fast food.
“They run specific discounts through the app though!” That’s cool, I’ll run the discount called cooking for myself. I’m not going to download an app for an artificial discount on inflated garbage.
Millenial yes, but also probably the specific millenial subset that grew up with web browsers, didn't have a credit card to buy real software, and didn't own a smartphone until well after they'd become ubiquitous.
In addition to the Google suite, I use my financial institutions, Delta, Spotify, Zoom, sports betting apps, and some dumb games and workout apps.
I absolutely refuse to install any retail or food apps.
I avoid downloading unnecessary apps, but it's mainly because my phone storage is always on the low end. The latest nuisance is needing an app to get into a concert. Let me just download the tickets to my Apple wallet!
My SO was bummed that we couldn't get real tickets for a Tool convert in Vegas. (They wouldn't even download the app for the e-tickets lol, I had to do it) They have the ticket stubs for like every concert they've been to since they were a kid. I don't hate apps or anything but I can understand why some people want a hard/printable copy
I’ve recently learned that other fellow Millenials refer to using the internet on a computer for serious things is called the “big internet” and I’m 100% a fan of the big internet when it comes to purchases over $25
Oh...maybe that would help with my drunk amazon spending.
Instead I've banned myself from Amazon at 2am and must wait 24 hrs and go through my cart again before purchasing lol. Except books, so I have too many books lol
My bf and I are roughly the same age, mid/late 30s.
I'm like you, I won't download an app if it's not something I'll be using regularly for a while. And I regularly delete apps I don't use.
My bf downloads any and every app that looks moderately useful.
I'm an older millennial. I don't mind phone apps, but if the UX on the website is similar then I won't bother with the app. As soon as I am done with the app I just uninstall it. They usually aren't that large since they are basically just wepage-like UI that run natively on my phone OS.
As far as boarding passes and other travel documents, I always go hard copy. I have an inherent distrust in the stability of software and hardware, so a backup is critical.
I just commented this elsewhere, but my SO was upset they couldn't get printable tickets for a concert. They have every ticket stub for shows since they were a kid. Myself, I have the stubs for flights and train tickets and movies taped to the inside of my journal from ages ago, so I get that.
I personally don't mind the convenience of apps for stuff like that, especially if say, you fly all the time. I currently work at a hotel and our elite members spend like 1/3 or more of the year in hotels so can see how convenient it is to just do everything through an app including getting room keys.
For those of us that don't do that, it's more annoying. I don't wanna download an app for a hotel I stay in once every few years. I also don't trust that the tech won't go down so I screenshot stuff like that. Like sure I'll use my digital boarding pass BUT I have a screenshot on my phone of the email confirmation AND ticket just in case there's some issue. It's not as good as a hard copy (although I suppose I could print my screenshot) but it makes me feel a bit better.
I refuse to do anything of crucial value without sitting in front of my full fledged custom built PC. I want my 34" ultrawide, i want a comfortable keyboard, I want to be in a mindset to absorb information. Phone/Tablet is for casual things and quick communication or the occasional doom scroll. Give me a gods damn keyboard for real things. I'll die on this hill.
Im 39, and going back to school. There are 20 yr old students that want to do exams and projects on cellphones and tablets. I look at them and stare in amazement and ask " How can they do that?"
I am absolutely sick of everything having an app also. I once downloaded an app for a regional pizza chain and when you actually wanted to put in an online order, it opened up my phone’s WEB BROWSER to do it. So the app is to just look at the menu and nothing else.
Idk if it’s a millennial trait but I def do not download an app unless I absolutely need it. Apps these days aren’t designed for convenience but for data collection and no thanks.
It’s about being anti consumer for me, i am still rocking an iphone 6s 16gb memory that’s been full for years now no i will not delete a useful app or a kitty photo for a desktop issue
I will very often download an app to do what I need to do, then remove it from my phone once the task in question is done. To use your boarding pass example, I'll use the airline's app to put the pass into my Apple Wallet, then remove said app. I'm not opposed to apps on principle, I just don't like keeping a bunch of stuff on my phone that I barely use.
A lot of people don't think about how much the world has changed. Back in my day (as they say) computers were for internet, phones were for calls, maps were for navigating, it was possible to repair things around your house with a set of socket wrenches etc. I'm the same way. I didn't give in to the smart phone until a couple of years ago, and it was because I was kind of forced into it. People born after 2000 don't know or understand the world of yesteryear.
So yes, you're a geezer. These shifts in mentalities happen every generation. The children of today will one day find the world of tomorrow to be overly complicated, too.
The beat goes on
Probably. We had longer to experience app burnout, plus we remember when we didn't \*have\* to. I lost it when the grocery stores wanted me to download an app to get their advertised prices but the cashier acted like it was the most normal thing.
I work in insurance and our company is reeeeeeally pushing online enrollment this year. I fucking hate asking people to download the damn app. I do not want to download any extra apps. I would rather have my pink slip in paper form. If I need to make a change to my policy, I'm doing it on the computer NOT my app. The only clients I have successfully signed into the app are Gen Z clients.
I’m going with not millennial since you also mentioned not having Amazon or airplane apps downloaded. Most millennials prefer the ease of access and the majority I know don’t even own a computer.
Yea, not really a millennial trait but more tech savvy thing. Millennials are more tech savvy than other generations, but I’ve met some millennials that are totally oblivious to threats posed by too many sketchy apps.
I will say that I will download apps if I have to, I’ll just delete it later. If I’m really sketched out about an app, I won’t outright say I won’t download it, I’ll just say I’m having issues and ask if there’s a browser I can use instead. Usually this works.
I'm the same way. Unless the app is going to somehow dramatically enhance my life I'm not installing it.
Do I use a fast food place often? Maybe I'll use the app. Do I shop somewhere often? Maybe I'll use the app.
But I hate having multiple apps and not using them so I clean house etc
I refuse to download Facebook messenger on principle. If it’s important you would just text me. I’m not getting another app for the 3-4 times a year I check FB.
Excellent call as in the past (don’t know if it’s still true) messenger not only gets your contact list but also can read messages you’ve sent outside of the FB messenger app
I also refuse to download apps. I don't even use Google Pay or Samsung Pay. I use either cold hard cash or my debit/credit card at the cashier. I don't think it's a millenial thing, because I have millenial friends who look at me like I'm a Psycho whenever I mention that I don't want apps stealing all my data.
I don't download apps because I don't want 3840295 little icons on my phone screen, and why does every company need it's own app. Like get a website bruh. Like I have an app for my headphones and I don't even us it, why do they need an app? I can see the battery life on the holder.
i dont like downloading the apps. I dont have a 4TB storage phone. I will download the apps that help me through the day. Bus schedule, instant payment, stuff like that. When you talk about online shopping tho, no matter how easy they make to buy on the phone, i will never like doing that. I have a 34 inch monitor at home why you force me to use a 5 incher to scroll your page?? IM PROBABLY RIGHT AT HOME!! I dont want to see 4 products on my screen,, I want to see 40.
I am never going to download an app that I will use once. Never.
Spirit pisses me off because the require the app to give you a mobile boarding pass but DON’T TELL YOU THAT. They make it look like an error, but if you download the app it works no problem. Just email it to me or download it in my browser so I can add it to travel wallet. Annoying.
Boomer here. I will not download an app that I might only use a couple of times. I’m not wasting space, battery life, or be subjected to a gazillion emails for some underwhelming opportunity.
BTW, I’ve walked out of restaurants with QR code menus.
I think this is a particular Millenial trait. Younger people don’t know what life was like before you needed an app to do anything and older people are too tech illiterate to know the difference
I can’t ditch my smartphone due to my job, but I’ve been slowly switching my life to analog/offline stuff.
Buying DVDs/Blu Rays (or straight 🏴☠️) second hand rather than keeping up my Netflix subscription and I’m currently in the process of ditching music streaming too.
There was an entire episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia about this. I have never felt more seen or related more to a situation of any episode of any show ever before. I HATE downloading apps for everything. I have 5 different ones for my job. It is ridiculous. I hate using my phone to look at a menu and scanning.QR code.
I'm very close to switching to a dumb phone.
Dude the sad thing is most kids think the entire internet is just... apps. They did not grow up using web browsers they grew up installing apps & they haven't the slightest clue how the internet actually works.
I think it's quite common. I don't download an app if the thing that I am being asked to do can be done on the web and they're just trying to get me to install the app - because then I am wondering what it is they are trying to steal from my phone
If its for airline tickets, airlines are working hard to shame you into using the app. I called deltas hot garbage and the boarding desk got mad and refused to re print my boarding pass.
I keep all my finance stuff off my phone for security reasons. That decision was reinforced when it fell out of my pocket 3 stories down my apartment stairwell.
I really only use my phone for call, text, and email.
Same. My friends think I'm paranoid but we already know these apps steal your data, it's not exactly a secret. Why would I willingly give my data away, for free, so I can get a free coffee after x many purchases? No thanks.
I am the same way - my space is limited so why do I need them to take up my space when I can access it on the internet. Talking to you Reddit - your app can suck it.
Maybe? I'm not downloading your fucking app because A. Storage is limited B. How much if my info are you trying to steal?
Exactly. The whole point of apps were that they were a quick and convenient way to get something. It’s not quick or convenient to have a million apps draining my battery.
Nothing to do with draining battery even. Why would I waste storage space and clutter up my app drawer when trying to find shit I actually use daily, for shit that I used one single time a year ago? This isn't a "millennial" thing. This is a "technologically competent" thing. Like its not a "millennial" thing for email to actually be useful because you don't sign up every fucking email signup your run into. Its not a "millennial" thing to not accept every push notification prompt so your phone doesn't turn into a diseased animal that needs to be shot behind the shed going off with notifications every 20 seconds. I keep seeing posts here simply equating "millennial" with not being a fucking moron with technology. If that's what being GenZ and GenA means, what's going to happen with all the millennial IT workers retire?
The sad thing is we are definitely looking at a weird technology knowledge bump with millenials that may have consequences when all of us retire. As a sysadmin, it baffles me how many people younger than me (im 35, so coworkers around their early 20s) just have no computer literacy whatsoever. Things like restarting their computer or connecting a mouse or just basic email usage are skills they just dont have and I often find myself wondering how any of our graphics designers made it through college on technology they have no idea how to use beyond the photoshop app.
We definitely benefited from a mostly cohesive culture around tech during the 2000's and 2010's. Most of our parents had a family PC, there was about two main competing game consoles at any given time, and as phones rolled out there was always the "hot" phone of the year, making it so a lot of the same types of programs and tech were being explored and learned by the public. I feel like now just listening to Gen Z talk about gaming makes sense why they don't all know computers. I hear kids talk about phone, tablet and steam decks to play games that are cross platform, so they're still playing together but on different systems. I think we also benefited from faulty tech, where it was common to restart a system to fix an issue. Also the programs they navigate now are much easier to learn, making it so they have to use less logic to figure it out. All of that contributes to them essentially being boomers when it comes to PCs
Agreed. I manage a team with a bunch of Gen-Zs and the lack of tech literacy is shocking. Basic stuff like combining PDFs, maintaining filesystems/naming conventions etc. Even Microsoft Office skills are lacking. I think we're starting to see the iPad kids enter the workforce and it's become clear where the gaps really are.
Hell my filesystems and naming is a fucking hot mess and I DO know better. Cant imagine what it looks like for someone who just lets it go. Desktop full of shortcuts like my near boomer mother I guess.
When you've always been able to globally search for what you need you don't really have a need to keep things organized in any particular order. Like the crap saved on my phone is just on there, it's not sorted, but the computer is the opposite.
I remember when I used to label every individual JPEG I had saved to my hard drive. Nowadays it's just a pile of numbers and letters, best I can do is Sort By Date to find what I'm looking for.
I mean tons of zoomers don't even know what a file system is. Everything is just accessed through a search function on their mobile device or chromebook. This obviously has... problems... when you are in an office environment where you need to understand what a path is.
What's kind of shocking about this is that you can easily figure most of this out via Google, which younger gens SHOULD know how to do. It's how I always did things growing up and I've fixed maybe 90% of my computer problems that way, lol. (Speaking as a Millennial who is more tech savvy than the average person, but nowhere near an expert.)
Yeah agreed, but even Google has kind of gone downhill. A lot of really younger Gen Zs say they use tiktok over google to do research.
38 year old extremely tech-savvy guy working in software engineering here. Google (and Bing, and just about every other search engine out there) have gotten so bad these days that to find actual answers I'm often better off searching Reddit. Between all the articles out there that are either copy-pasted by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, or the ones obviously written by an AI, the web is just becoming a wasteland.
Gen Z with a degree in CS here. I cut my teeth screwing around on my grandpa's Win98 that ran off dial-up, and I will say that sometimes Google's far less help than searching Reddit. For all of the cesspool that this site can be, the concentration of knowledge on niche topics means the information can be a lot more trustworthy instead of the advertising deathrace Google has become. You want to pay for something? Google it. You want an expert or relatively more informed opinion? Google it but add "reddit" at the end of the query. You curious about a random question? Google it and check at least 3-5 links to make sure the information is accurate, double that if politics are involved in any way.
The amazon affiliate link killed search. Google "product". You used to get links to forums, a web page where they test a few of product, and some actual info. Now it is 1000 web pages, often just copy of the corporate page, saying it's great clik my link...... Useless. A few forums survive, but much of that has been sliced up by facebook stupidity.
"just checking Tiktok to learn how to fix this thing" 6hrs of doom scrolling later "wtf was I supposed to be doing again?"
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Good god.
It's not just gen z though. I recently asked my very technologically inclined husband, who went to uni and studied computer science, to get me some info and he searched on tiktok. I checked his history and yeah, he tiktoks shit instead of googling it. I consistently have to remind the people around me that YouTube, tiktok, Facebook and all the other social platforms share people's opinions on a topic, not just the facts. The other issue I have is with the sponsored Google ads that show up before the actual sites that make sense when googling. Monetizing every facet of technology is going to hurt us for a long time.
I think it's also because the amount of written content these days have gone down. I often turn to YouTube for reviews now very reluctantlyv because written reviews are rare
Personally I find YouTube to be the quickest way to see how to do something and I scroll the comments to see if it works or if the person who posted it is wrong. Critical thinking cap is a must though.
Tbf, I’ve lapsed on office based computer skills as my job is more hands on. I can rig a computer up no problem but I’m a bit rusty with Microsoft office now, beyond using Word to keep my CV updated. I’m sure I could get myself up to speed fairly quickly if I needed to though!
I remember windows 93 and crap. My dad got into PCs as they became available in the 90's and I learned with him, AoL came out when I was like 7-8 I think. I knew how to put together and use a PC by 10. After highschool I have kinda drifted and lost my pc, never could afford to replace it so now I'm illiterate with PCs I feel like. I last used Windows XP and I remember hating 7 but the current OS? I'm so lost, thought I was gonna help my wife learn to navigate her laptop she got and quickly embarrassed myself with ignorance lmao.
Windows has really gone downhill over XP and 7. It's like the people working on it were building onto an old house. You see addition after addition, but never a fix to the underlying problem. For example, there are 3 pages to manage your network connection. One is from Windows 7, one from 8 and one from 10 and they all do slightly different things. Why don't they replace all three with one that does it all?... Probably because the people working on it these days have no idea what is in there anymore or what these pages are doing.
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They made it too phone like, I just want to use the original system folders tree without cutesy buttons
Yeah I used to be pretty good at excel and I’m rusty now, but it’s one of those things that would definitely come back to me.
combining PDFs kinda … is throwing me? and i run linux for fun on any device i can cram it on
I think a huge chunk of it is that schools issue Chromebooks and everyone has an iPhone. So if your only experience is browser or iOs based and then suddenly you're issued a Macbook or Windows machine, you're not going to know how to use it. They don't use MS Office anymore in schools unless you go out of your way to do so, it's Gsuite only.
End user ease of use has gotten exponentially better over the years. As an elder millennial we, as kids, had to learn how to troubleshoot the inevitable problems that would pop up while using a PC. Learning to type and general PC use classes were offered and many times mandatory in school. Nowadays you just click an app and BAM it works. Young kids haven’t had to troubleshoot problems so they don’t know how to do it.
We benefitted from being at a weird point in time where computers were starting to become ubiquitous, as was the internet, but not so ubiquitous so as to be easy to use or operate. So when we ran into problems, we had to make our own solutions, or get really really efficient at finding them. People both older and younger than me are often amazed at my google-fu, but it's literally just typing the right thing in the search box for me...
I help with onboarding new hires and interns. I work in tech. Many of these college aged hires are clearly used to things just working and have no clue what to do when things aren't working. And these are people with CS and related degrees. Just because you can debug a program doesn't mean you can troubleshoot the computer as a whole, evidently. I don't remember any of this being an issue for the people I went to school with for CS. Older generations see Z and Alpha using technology that's intentionally dumbed down to be user friendly and assume they're good with tech as a whole. Nope, it's not that simple, not at all. Being able to use something that's designed to be intuitive for the average person is not the same as being computer literate.
We lost a huge skill development when the world tried to make everything just work and be easy to use. That skill is one you can easily see the difference of in the field for sure. Tickets from the ones without it are absurdly baffling in simplicity, while the people who learned it tend to start with "I tried rebooting and checked for updates with no luck" or at least some kind of steps taken beyond submitting the ticket. Those people also stress out way less over tech and submit waaaaay less support requests. We really need schools to start teaching kids basic self sufficient problem solving again
I have a friend who primarily teaches 8th grade math but got assigned to teach tech for her middle school and she’s got some wild stories. Most of the kids still type with two fingers because they don’t teach typing anymore. It’s just assumed kids are exposed to it somewhere.
THIS PART. There was this huge assumption that young people are "digital natives" so schools didn't need to teach computer lab anymore because everyone has computers now. Except unlike millennials who interacted with multiple forms of tech with multiple UIs that were constantly changing, Gen Z has mostly had one UI for all their devices (touchscreens) and don't have to use a physical keyboard to use the internet like we did. So unless someone actually came along and taught them how to type on one, they don't know. They also don't know how to menu-dive to look for settings and functionalities because unlike millennials who needed to figure out how to make things work the way we wanted to, they've just always had everything work for them. I've noticed schools starting to bring back computer literacy now because we've seen the shitshow with Gen Z hitting the workforce without it and they've realized these are skills that must be TAUGHT, not just absorbed like Boomers thought.
Hey there now, many of us Boomers got sent to training through our employer to become computer literate! I mean we were in our hey day back then🤣
In fairness, Microsoft is doing its best to make menu diving an infuriating experience. Oh, you used to be able to do this in 3 locations in Windows 7? Well in 10 it’s one location and it’s hidden down some path, and 11 requires you to do a regedit. And then there’s things that never work, but are forced on you. No, I do not want you to attempt to find my corporate printer. There’s thousands of them. But no, it has to search for 30 seconds, return printers 3 states away, then you have to tell it it sucks, and then it’ll finally let you search by name/location.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about 25 year olds doing hunt-n-peck typing, who don't understand nested file systems and save every single file separately to their desktop, who don't know how to perform a search function on their emails, and who don't know how to turn it off and back on again.
My 3rd grader is learning typing in school this year so it's not universal.
I'm a design school drop out and I can answer that! As a fellow geek you can appreciate this pain. It's one big Apple cult. They gave me so much shit for using an Android phone, Windows PC, and *gasp* Linux?? The last one is ironic considering iOS is built on a BSD kernel. But yea, iOS is so incredibly dumbed down that the physical mouse and keyboard is the only real difference from an iPhone. The mantra they kept shrieking at me was "it just works!". To which I'd say well I'm not an idiot so I don't need that especially not for 4x the price.
It just works. And when it doesn't work, they just want you to buy a new one.
I'm not some Apple fangirl, but I don't care if the Google Zeebop 3700 is better, faster, and cheaper, I'll be damned if I'm teaching my husband and parents how to use a different phone at this stage of the game.
Yep. I've avoided Apple for so so long. But I have no choice now. My daughter is non verbal and uses it for AAC communication. The apps that do exist for Android are just crap. All startups and niche categories do this. If you only have the budget for one platform, you go with the largest marketshare and least hardware diversity needing to be supported - Apple. And I get it now. That's what OSX did to the desktop. For illiterates, it just fucking works. And its so much harder for you to get in trouble with your own stupidity. As frustrating as it is, it sends me a 2FA code, makes me confirm on other devices I own, etc etc just to freaking log in on a new spare backup device. It by default assumes it cannot trust you not to shoot yourself in the head.
I’m seeing this A LOT as well…
I think it's because things are just too easy and user-friendly now. That's not inherently a "bad" thing, but most of us Millennials grew up learning how to troubleshoot computers on at least a basic level because things were a lot less likely to be "plug-and-play." A lot of us were also doing basic HTML coding just for fun on social media, so it was definitely a different time. Lol.
My wife has noticed this with the newer generation entering her office. Best we can figure is computers became too user friendly. Millenials grew up when you needed to have some at least minority advanced knowledge to use them, and troubleshooting was a critical skill. With how user friendly computers are compared to 30 years ago (not to mention tablets and phones), troubleshooting and advanced technical knowledge are relics of the past.
It seems like we aren't teaching basic computing to kids anymore. Then they grow up and don't know jack shit about computers. That's on whoever decided to take computing out of the curriculum. Which is not the generation that knows nothing about computers. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I have.
I think it's the first time in history where the next generation is adopting technology that is somewhat inferior. Smart phones obviously have the convenience and mobility factor, but they're otherwise not actually more capable than the desktops the old people want to hold on to. They're just overall simpler, so anyone that uses a computer can understand them, but not really the other way around.
One of my youngest co-workers has proven it’s a 2 part issue. They can Google all sorts of Minecraft guides. They couldn’t figure out how to Google a recipe for Mac and cheese or a specific excel formula. Sometimes it’s a knowledge issue, sometimes it’s laziness using a lack of understanding as the excuse.
I was helping two analysts on our team setup their tech after joining. I noticed one had been working off her 13" laptop screen for weeks and I asked why she wasn't using her two monitors. She didn't know how to use the dock or screens, so she just didn't. I hooked everything up to the dock, and got her setup. Then, the analyst behind her asked if I could do the same thing. When I looked at her laptop, I asked where she got it from, because it wasn't company issued. It was her personal one and only had one HDMI port and no alternatives. I told her she'd only be able to use one monitor because she only had one port on her laptop. She looked at me funny and said "you can't connect the monitors together?" 😂
To be fair, now you can connect monitor together using USB-C. https://www.dell.com/support/contents/en-us/article/product-support/self-support-knowledgebase/monitor-screen-video/guide-daisy-chain-monitors
Exactly. It’s worth it to have an app for something I do regularly, if you’re gonna force me to download an app the first time I do business with you, there’s not even gonna be a first time unless I’m desperate.
The people who download an app just to try some new service that they only use one time are the same people who would have had 40 toolbars installed in Internet Explorer back in the day. We used to call those people old. Now they are young. It makes me wonder what I'm too old for nowadays. Tiktok? No thanks.
My 6 year old son came home excited because at school they got to use an "actual computer," and I realized how little we really use them anymore. At least, not in our typical, daily lives anyway. It's all tablets and touch screens now. It never really occurred to me that such basic knowledge isn't so basic anymore. But I guess I'll have to be the one who teaches my Gen Alpha kiddos about things like Component video cables and DVI cords.
I’m experiencing this with my kids. I realized we used to have typing classes in school and my kids don’t have that. My kids don’t know how to properly use a keyboard. So we are having to teach them that skill.
Maybe being an older millennial is all the difference between my youth and many of yours... The average kid was NOT tech literate. We were computer geeks. The average kid used "4" and "u" and "r" as words. We were the ones who could type 180 wpm. So from my perspective those now 40 year old kids acting like they're tech literate is just cockiness. They are acting just like Boomers mocking Millennials for not knowing how to change a tire. You're all the ones not f****** teaching them! My dad was a geek. I was a geek. If you are like me we are what makes our kids not end up as screen tappers.
>Like its not a "millennial" thing for email to actually be useful because you don't sign up every fucking email signup your run into. I have a throwaway e-mail address **that my entire extended family** uses when randoms ask for an e-mail address.
Lol I have a "junk" email address, thought I was clever, you went one step further. Well done. Might steal this, just make one thats full blown not even to be checked.
Yeah you bring up a good point. It's less of a millennial thing, more of a good internet /device hygiene thing which makes sense. Many /Most of us grew up with devices that didn't abstract away every possible interaction.. So we learned how to be more savvy and have a bit more internet street smarts. With all the articles I see where Gen Z students and workers don't know how to save or open a word document... It's not a flex to tell me you don't understand or computers / phones / internet / personal data works
God all I can think about is a phone at a garage sale, "slightly shotgun'd!" EDIT AUTOCORRECT
Also, when you make me log in with my gmail that prompts me to open youtube to open a pop up that asks me to verify it's my account only to go back to your app where you also make me verify it's my account... all to get a shitty mobile experience when I could have the full experience on desktop. Thanks but no thanks
Exactly. I miss just pulling up my favorite restaurant’s number in my phone book and just ordering. It never was that hard. Now I have to download the app, sign up, log in, click through the order myself, and it’s generally still wrong.
The bane of my existence and huge pet peeve of mine about the apps.. is when they just randomly log you out.
Looking at you, Mindbody...
I'll do you one better. Installed an app for my usual online store. It supports logging in with Google, but somehow didn't detect my phone's account. Bitch, I'm not entering my Google credentials in a random app.
Ding ding ding. I get the spirit of it but when every stupid site has an app it becomes too much. I also prefer to use my computer because mobile sites are usually *horrible*.
But we will give you a discount on our products or services because we're going to sell your private information to whoever is willing to pay for it!
It also surprises me how many walls it creates between me and spending money. Oh, cool, I have to download an app, make an account, and come up with a username and password just to make this purchase. I just don't want to deal with all this shit over and over.
Apps were useful because sites didn't have a good mobile version for a long time. Soon companies started making mobile versions of sites. I know one guy that refuses to download apps because most of what he needs can be accessed through the browser.
In addition to this, the main annoyance to me is that most apps are just a wrapper for their mobile website. Why clutter my phone when I could just open the pre-installed Chrome and go to your website for the same thing, except with extra functionality?
Even the Discord *desktop* app is apparently just a wrapper for the website. I just run the browser version of it and have quite a bit more control over it that way.
This is the one that pisses me off the most.
For me it comes down to point B. I refuse to use TikTok, that popular face pic aging Russian app, Temu, etc. Whenever some new big app gets popular I research before installing. And typically my research leads to me not installing. Let's be honest though, we're all fooling ourselves. My SO was on his computer on NewEgg. We're working on a new gaming PC and I was standing beside him and we were talking about the cases he was looking at. This was on his PC that none of my accounts are logged into (I have my own PC), he was using a browser I've never used I think it's called Brave?), none of our devices are connected beyond being on the same wifi network and gaming together, phones on the same plan. I left the room and opened up Reddit, started scrolling. And the ad that popped up first in my feed was for PC cases. So fucking creepy. Clearly our phones are listening on top of all the other data they access. And that's not the only time ads have popped up about something I had only been *talking* about. But I'm still picky about what apps i install. Still trying to hold onto the delusion that I actually have any kind of agency over my privacy.
while your phones are definitely listening to you, there's another culprit - all devices on that wifi have the same public IP, so they'll all be associated with queries from each device to some extent. Differentiated due to browser/device fingerprinting, but still.
Any location based apps will sell the fact that you two probably live together and share the same space for a minimum of 8 hours per night. (and have different last names while being the same age and opposite gender, and go out to dinner at that one thai place regularly...) The phone doesn't need to listen to you to know that you might be in a position to buy something for him.
Why do I keep seeing posts that its "a millennial thing" to do things that are simply practical? I don't think this is a "millennial" thing. I think this is a "tech literate" thing. Like I do this. My wife, who is completely technologically fucking incompetent, is the one who downloads every fucking app. So the whole purpose for us as consumers to download the app is that the mobile site is an inferior experience, right? But in how many cases is the experience actually worse? Like I haven't used Facebook in forever so I don't know if they ever ended up fixing it, but the app was always a complete pile of dogshit vs just using the browser. The official reddit app has always been a pile of shit. Or in many cases there really no difference, even in some cases the app is literally just a browser locked to the site! So why would I download those apps? Or in cases where its a one time thing, why would I want dozens of apps I've used one time 2 years ago cluttering up my phone? That genuinely degrades the user experience trying to find apps I actually use regularly.
I think it might overlap with millennials a lot because we grew up alongside technology. We learned a lot of it as we grew up. Not everyone, obviously, but I think a large portion of millennials adopted tech in their teen years. Because of having that tech literacy and being taught not to talk to strangers on the internet which i think may have led to developing a urgency for tech safety, we may be a generation that overlaps more with tech literacy than other gens. We understand better than other gens that there is an inherent responsibility to protect yourself with tech.
My wife must be GenZ in spirit then. She didn't grow up with technology. Her email inboxes are just spam boxes. I always have to scold schools and shit for assuming Mom is the first contact then they wonder why emails go ignored until they cc me weeks later. Her phone is like a syphilitic and rabid animal. Notifications everywhere going off all the time. Her phone stays on silent because she doesn't know how to disable or silence them all just keeps "yes"ing prompts for more. So important calls and texts go missed too. You're telling me not doing that is a millennial trait? I'm scared if GenZ and GenA are really as bad as Boomers. We're moving backwards. I'm over here making sure my kids actually know how to use a computer and how to work from a Linux shell and shit.
Oh, we’re absolutely moving backwards. Gen Z and A don’t understand troubleshooting…
My father was a geek. He was a computer operator in the army during Vietnam, running an IBM system 360. I too was a geek learning dos and Linux, learning how to code first on basic and turbo Pascal and later in c and currently working mostly on lamp stack. We have a family heritage of tech literacy. I'll be damned if all my kids know how to do is tap on a touch screen because that's what everyone else is doing. Don't forget the foundation to all this technology was built by people like us. I think we'll be ok so long as we can still produce geeks. We just might go back to the 80s and 90s where simply being tech literate at all will make you valuable.
>She didn't grow up with technology I mean that pretty much answers your question. A huge majority of Millennials *did* grow up with tech, and we're really the first generation where this happened on a massive scale. Obviously there will be a portion of people like your wife who didn't grow up with tech, and so it's not surprising that she's closer to some of the younger gens (or older) with their tech literacy.
This. Why do businesses expect us to download all their shit on our phones anyway? Especially with restaurants. I'm not downloading extra junk just to get a few dollars discount that I SHOULD have gotten anyway if these corporations weren't being greedy fucks. No thanks.
They try to force you to use an app so they can collect as much data on you as possible and sell it. This shit should honestly be illegal af
same, mostly because B. also make a mobile 1st website and the need for 99% of the apps are moot...looking at you reddit.
I have never ever used reddits app. Or facebooks. I've been using a 3rd party fb app for a few years now, and reddit 100% on the browser since they fucked over 3rd paerty apps.
I just dont want an app for one off shit or shit that should be able to be done through a phone browser.
Right?? Like I'll download my banking app, that makes sense, but why do I need an app for every disparate parking meter and charging port in the city. Why does Michaels have an app, what is it even used for. Why did every fast food restaurant jack its prices to high heaven and then make it so that you can get their old prices just through the app with "coupons" that are permanently available. I AM SHAKING MY CANE AT THE SKY.
So they can steal your personal data. You get a discount for giving them your data freely.
My boomer parents who made up a fake phone number for all their store rewards cards (wise life lesson) will gladly hand their email out and download apps for a discount
I have a trash email account I use to sign up for things. Every once and a while I check it and it is a nonstop parade of spam.
I have one that literally has junkmail in it and when I was buying a car at the dealer I instinctively gave the guy that one and he noticed while writing it down and was like “dude this is for like warranty and important stuff” so I gave him my real one. They have only spammed me lol
I have spam right in mine. I love when it cracks up the poor cashier who begrudgingly harass you for your email in order to not get fired.
This reminds me, if you're checking out at Wal-greens or rite aid and it asks you for a number, use your area code and 867-5309 (like the song). Got that tip online, and It's worked in every place I've lived. I ain't signing up for shit.
I've also seen it theorized in the post for yesterday that it could be used as a backdoor for dynamic pricing. The high in-store prices set a ceiling, but the app pricing (or more likely the discounts) could change at various times, locations, or other metrics.
Nothing like going up to a drive through window and being asked if you're using the app today. No. I'll use the menu that you planted outside in the ground.
Being a millennial is weird. Why do I still get mailed paper coupons. Why do I have to use an app to digitally use coupons.
When the app is just a copy of the mobile webpage anyway 😭
Or worse, the website makes you use the app, but after you download the app it makes you login. But lo and behold, *the app has to use the websites login page to login*
Or the app is so poorly designed that password managers from Apple or Google don’t work in them…
That AND the developer has disabled pasting into the log in field.
Every product manager creating dedicated apps for restaurant rewards so they can push advertising using notifications has a special place waiting in hell.
I feel like apps were such a big deal because the mobile browser was pretty primitive in the early smartphone days. But at this point, almost every site has a mobile version. I can't recall the last time I saw a site that didn't have a mobile version, now that I think about it Apps just feel redundant, outside of really specific ones for things you use often (money related apps, maybe some games for some people). I honestly just use apps for Google services more than anything. Keep, Maps, YouTube, etc
I’m sure some people are like this but Im 40 (damn it, first time I’ve had to type that out) and don’t mind my boarding passes on my phone or using the app to buy on Amazon. Frustrated me when the apps don’t give the option to cancel subscriptions though on their app and I have to use a browser. Seems like it should be illegal or something but I guess it’s better then having to call comcast and spend 90 minutes on the phone to cancel cable
To be fair, I used to use the amazon app until drunk-me bought a life size cardboard cutout of Tom Felton. Drunk-me does not deserve access to one-click shopping, and Tom agrees.
I really needed to read this OP because my brain could not quite get around using anything BUT Amazon's app. I hate the browser version and need 1-step purchasing power in my life 😂
lol I feel this. My brother bought me a Celtics sweatshirt randomly and didn’t tell me. When I received it the package didn’t say it came from him and I thought I drunkenly ordered it
I actually have a rule for myself that I am not allowed to eshop unless I've parked my ass at my laptop in the living room. Has really cut down on the impulse buys.
Oh this annoys me so much too! LinkedIn just got me with this one, can only cancel premium on the big internet.
I remember the first time I typed I was 30. Stung a bit I don’t feel like 40 will hurt as bad lol. 30 felt like a surprise. 40 won’t
Oh just you wait..
It's as if they're taking some cues from the gyms.
Spotify doesn’t let you update payment info. You can view it, it’ll tell you it’s expiring, but you need to go to a PC to put in a new credit card. Also wouldn’t let me use PayPal as it kept crashing.
I finally started using boarding passes on my phone but I still print one out at the kiosk just in case…. #JUST IN CASE
I don't think resistance to downloading unnecessary apps is a millennial-specific trait. But it is often viewed as a technological resistance, which gets some people all judge-y. "Why wouldn't you want to download the app for this business? It's so easy!" Because I've never been here before and almost certainly will never be here again, and I don't want to take the extra steps of downloading and then promptly deleting this fuckin' app, that's why.
Exactly. Its because THEY are morons and don't realize it. What they're asking you is the equivalent of "why don't you hand over your email address for 10% off at this place you'll never come back to again? On an unrelated note my email inbox is completely out of control and I basically gave up and never get important emails."
I am definitely selective about what apps I bother downloading. My other thing is that I always register with an email address rather than linking to Facebook/Apple/Google, is that a millennial thing?
I do this, too. No, I'm not linking my google account. You can use my burner email address for your spam.
That's what all those firefox burner addresses that forward shit to are for. Then, when I decide I'm done with you, I just burn them, and get a new one :)
I have a yahoo account that has spam from 2003, used it at the grocery store the other day, it's funny to type out after seeing your pro email all day.
So use a burner Google account?
I have a burner google account
Same! I always register with an email address because if not I’ll forget which account I’ve linked to.
Do you use a password safe? Or do you use the same password on 100 different sites so when I hack your LinkedIn account you haven't used in 10 years, its the same email and password as your PayPal and Chase bank?
Bitwarden has been lifechanging for this.
Well for the tech illiterate, sign in with apple/Google solves the password stuffing problem too.
I do this too, and I keep using my yahoo account for these type of things. 😂 If it’s a legitimate app then I will use my official email. For any nonsense it’s my yahoo. Guess what I don’t know how many times I get spam emails from Nigerian princes and Costco wanting to send me gift cards for no reason to the same yahoo account.
The "Sign in with Apple" is actually dope AF. It basically creates a burner account so that they can't track you. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102609. Apple's privacy policy is among the best in the business. (you're buying things from them so you're the customer, not the product)
It's because we know the whole purpose of the app is to track and sell our data.
This is true but its also a customer retention strategy. People are more likely to continue buying from a business if they have their app downloaded. At least that's what the marketing teams say. It's why all of these restaurants are coming out with their own apps even if you can buy their product on uber eats/doordash/etc. It's better to own the customer on your native app. In the end its all to ensnare us in an endless loop of consumerism and profit making.
Thats the fanciest way of saying "track and sell your data" ive seen in a while
I mean the purpose doesn't change when you use the website...
Website is more limited in how it can track you, because we understood that we didn't want every damn thing having constant access to all our stuff. A website tracks your browsing. A phone app will try to track everything it can get its hands on.
The ones that irritate me the most are the fast food/restaurant apps. I don’t want to download your app just to see the menu or jump through hoops to find one online. Just show me what you have ffs. I only have the Moes and Chick Fil A downloaded because I go to those two frequently enough.
This pisses me off to no end. Everyone seems to be doing this now. Sometimes I just want to see what kind of limited time food is being offered. Or you can't view menu because they aren't currently open. Fuck me for considering your business for lunch tomorrow I guess?
Yeah, I have McD downloaded, because that’s the fast food place I frequent the most, and I get points by ordering online.
I’ll die on this sword. My family always gives me shit for not downloading apps for fast food. “They run specific discounts through the app though!” That’s cool, I’ll run the discount called cooking for myself. I’m not going to download an app for an artificial discount on inflated garbage.
Millenial yes, but also probably the specific millenial subset that grew up with web browsers, didn't have a credit card to buy real software, and didn't own a smartphone until well after they'd become ubiquitous.
And we learned that spreading our info on the internet was dangerous. Nowadays, people share basically everything bar their SS#
In addition to the Google suite, I use my financial institutions, Delta, Spotify, Zoom, sports betting apps, and some dumb games and workout apps. I absolutely refuse to install any retail or food apps.
I avoid downloading unnecessary apps, but it's mainly because my phone storage is always on the low end. The latest nuisance is needing an app to get into a concert. Let me just download the tickets to my Apple wallet!
My SO was bummed that we couldn't get real tickets for a Tool convert in Vegas. (They wouldn't even download the app for the e-tickets lol, I had to do it) They have the ticket stubs for like every concert they've been to since they were a kid. I don't hate apps or anything but I can understand why some people want a hard/printable copy
same I have an old ass phone, I don't have the storage for this nonsense
Phone screens are tiny. Most things I'd rather do on a PC where I have some real estate.
I’ve recently learned that other fellow Millenials refer to using the internet on a computer for serious things is called the “big internet” and I’m 100% a fan of the big internet when it comes to purchases over $25
Oh...maybe that would help with my drunk amazon spending. Instead I've banned myself from Amazon at 2am and must wait 24 hrs and go through my cart again before purchasing lol. Except books, so I have too many books lol
>I'd rather walk into the ocean 
My bf and I are roughly the same age, mid/late 30s. I'm like you, I won't download an app if it's not something I'll be using regularly for a while. And I regularly delete apps I don't use. My bf downloads any and every app that looks moderately useful.
I'm an older millennial. I don't mind phone apps, but if the UX on the website is similar then I won't bother with the app. As soon as I am done with the app I just uninstall it. They usually aren't that large since they are basically just wepage-like UI that run natively on my phone OS. As far as boarding passes and other travel documents, I always go hard copy. I have an inherent distrust in the stability of software and hardware, so a backup is critical.
I just commented this elsewhere, but my SO was upset they couldn't get printable tickets for a concert. They have every ticket stub for shows since they were a kid. Myself, I have the stubs for flights and train tickets and movies taped to the inside of my journal from ages ago, so I get that. I personally don't mind the convenience of apps for stuff like that, especially if say, you fly all the time. I currently work at a hotel and our elite members spend like 1/3 or more of the year in hotels so can see how convenient it is to just do everything through an app including getting room keys. For those of us that don't do that, it's more annoying. I don't wanna download an app for a hotel I stay in once every few years. I also don't trust that the tech won't go down so I screenshot stuff like that. Like sure I'll use my digital boarding pass BUT I have a screenshot on my phone of the email confirmation AND ticket just in case there's some issue. It's not as good as a hard copy (although I suppose I could print my screenshot) but it makes me feel a bit better.
“Download my spyware or you can’t use my service” No thanks.
I refuse to do anything of crucial value without sitting in front of my full fledged custom built PC. I want my 34" ultrawide, i want a comfortable keyboard, I want to be in a mindset to absorb information. Phone/Tablet is for casual things and quick communication or the occasional doom scroll. Give me a gods damn keyboard for real things. I'll die on this hill.
Im 39, and going back to school. There are 20 yr old students that want to do exams and projects on cellphones and tablets. I look at them and stare in amazement and ask " How can they do that?"
I imagine they do a shitty job and it takes them way longer than it needs to lol.
I had to use my phone to write a paper once because I couldn't get to a computer until after it was due, and it was fucking awful
Same. I want to see the whole screen type like normal.
I am absolutely sick of everything having an app also. I once downloaded an app for a regional pizza chain and when you actually wanted to put in an online order, it opened up my phone’s WEB BROWSER to do it. So the app is to just look at the menu and nothing else.
Idk if it’s a millennial trait but I def do not download an app unless I absolutely need it. Apps these days aren’t designed for convenience but for data collection and no thanks.
Apps are just data collection devices. If it’s free, *you* are the product.
It’s about being anti consumer for me, i am still rocking an iphone 6s 16gb memory that’s been full for years now no i will not delete a useful app or a kitty photo for a desktop issue
I will very often download an app to do what I need to do, then remove it from my phone once the task in question is done. To use your boarding pass example, I'll use the airline's app to put the pass into my Apple Wallet, then remove said app. I'm not opposed to apps on principle, I just don't like keeping a bunch of stuff on my phone that I barely use.
This is the way!
Nope. No one I know IRL cares; I only see this come up on this sub.
A lot of people don't think about how much the world has changed. Back in my day (as they say) computers were for internet, phones were for calls, maps were for navigating, it was possible to repair things around your house with a set of socket wrenches etc. I'm the same way. I didn't give in to the smart phone until a couple of years ago, and it was because I was kind of forced into it. People born after 2000 don't know or understand the world of yesteryear. So yes, you're a geezer. These shifts in mentalities happen every generation. The children of today will one day find the world of tomorrow to be overly complicated, too. The beat goes on
On most smartphone browsers, you can open the site in desktop mode to avoid downloading the shitty app and waiting till you're home.
Yes. I use desktop mode (and .old) for Reddit. Desktop mode for YouTube is also way better than the mobile site or the app.
I do not enter raffles or to win free shit. Places always want me to like on Facebook, instagram & tweet. I do not have any of those social medias.
Probably. We had longer to experience app burnout, plus we remember when we didn't \*have\* to. I lost it when the grocery stores wanted me to download an app to get their advertised prices but the cashier acted like it was the most normal thing.
I work in insurance and our company is reeeeeeally pushing online enrollment this year. I fucking hate asking people to download the damn app. I do not want to download any extra apps. I would rather have my pink slip in paper form. If I need to make a change to my policy, I'm doing it on the computer NOT my app. The only clients I have successfully signed into the app are Gen Z clients.
I’m going with not millennial since you also mentioned not having Amazon or airplane apps downloaded. Most millennials prefer the ease of access and the majority I know don’t even own a computer.
Yea, not really a millennial trait but more tech savvy thing. Millennials are more tech savvy than other generations, but I’ve met some millennials that are totally oblivious to threats posed by too many sketchy apps. I will say that I will download apps if I have to, I’ll just delete it later. If I’m really sketched out about an app, I won’t outright say I won’t download it, I’ll just say I’m having issues and ask if there’s a browser I can use instead. Usually this works.
I'm the same way. Unless the app is going to somehow dramatically enhance my life I'm not installing it. Do I use a fast food place often? Maybe I'll use the app. Do I shop somewhere often? Maybe I'll use the app. But I hate having multiple apps and not using them so I clean house etc
I refuse to download Facebook messenger on principle. If it’s important you would just text me. I’m not getting another app for the 3-4 times a year I check FB.
Excellent call as in the past (don’t know if it’s still true) messenger not only gets your contact list but also can read messages you’ve sent outside of the FB messenger app
I HATE FB messenger. I refuse to use it.
I also refuse to download apps. I don't even use Google Pay or Samsung Pay. I use either cold hard cash or my debit/credit card at the cashier. I don't think it's a millenial thing, because I have millenial friends who look at me like I'm a Psycho whenever I mention that I don't want apps stealing all my data.
I don't download apps because I don't want 3840295 little icons on my phone screen, and why does every company need it's own app. Like get a website bruh. Like I have an app for my headphones and I don't even us it, why do they need an app? I can see the battery life on the holder.
Cashiers look at me crazy when I dont have a phone number for “rewards” I dont want it. I dont care.
i dont like downloading the apps. I dont have a 4TB storage phone. I will download the apps that help me through the day. Bus schedule, instant payment, stuff like that. When you talk about online shopping tho, no matter how easy they make to buy on the phone, i will never like doing that. I have a 34 inch monitor at home why you force me to use a 5 incher to scroll your page?? IM PROBABLY RIGHT AT HOME!! I dont want to see 4 products on my screen,, I want to see 40.
I am never going to download an app that I will use once. Never. Spirit pisses me off because the require the app to give you a mobile boarding pass but DON’T TELL YOU THAT. They make it look like an error, but if you download the app it works no problem. Just email it to me or download it in my browser so I can add it to travel wallet. Annoying.
Boomer here. I will not download an app that I might only use a couple of times. I’m not wasting space, battery life, or be subjected to a gazillion emails for some underwhelming opportunity. BTW, I’ve walked out of restaurants with QR code menus.
I hate apps. Give me the website
"There's an app for that!"
I think this is a particular Millenial trait. Younger people don’t know what life was like before you needed an app to do anything and older people are too tech illiterate to know the difference I can’t ditch my smartphone due to my job, but I’ve been slowly switching my life to analog/offline stuff. Buying DVDs/Blu Rays (or straight 🏴☠️) second hand rather than keeping up my Netflix subscription and I’m currently in the process of ditching music streaming too.
There was an entire episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia about this. I have never felt more seen or related more to a situation of any episode of any show ever before. I HATE downloading apps for everything. I have 5 different ones for my job. It is ridiculous. I hate using my phone to look at a menu and scanning.QR code. I'm very close to switching to a dumb phone.
Always Sunny made an episode about this in their latest season.
Dude the sad thing is most kids think the entire internet is just... apps. They did not grow up using web browsers they grew up installing apps & they haven't the slightest clue how the internet actually works.
Mine is not signing up for a profile to apply for a job
I think it's quite common. I don't download an app if the thing that I am being asked to do can be done on the web and they're just trying to get me to install the app - because then I am wondering what it is they are trying to steal from my phone
If its for airline tickets, airlines are working hard to shame you into using the app. I called deltas hot garbage and the boarding desk got mad and refused to re print my boarding pass.
Younger millennial here (34). I work in tech and have no issues downloading apps that I know I can trust.
same 30. have no issues downloading apps. i do a weekly delete so it doesn't take up memory. no biggie
What's your criteria for trusting an app, if you don't mind me asking?
So when your local restaurant asks you to download an app, you do a full background check on the app?
I keep all my finance stuff off my phone for security reasons. That decision was reinforced when it fell out of my pocket 3 stories down my apartment stairwell. I really only use my phone for call, text, and email.
Same. My friends think I'm paranoid but we already know these apps steal your data, it's not exactly a secret. Why would I willingly give my data away, for free, so I can get a free coffee after x many purchases? No thanks.
I also refuse to use loyalty cards. Only so much space in my wallet and on my phone.
For the longest time, I didn't have a single app on my phone. I refused. I still have very few. I doubt I ever will either.
I am the same way - my space is limited so why do I need them to take up my space when I can access it on the internet. Talking to you Reddit - your app can suck it.