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90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F

posted by janrinok on Monday December 23 2019, @04:18PM   
from the perhaps-they-can't-find-it dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/

This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all.

"90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for. At the end I'll say to them, 'Let me show one little trick here,' and very often people will say, 'I can't believe I've been wasting my life!'"

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Original Submission

• Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @05:46PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @05:46PM (#935556)

  And still they somehow manage to spend their lives in their phones, and routinely jump through some impressive app-imbedded hoops doing some nonsense or other.
  Is it something about desktop systems that causes learning aversion, or is it everything that is even loosely connected with the notion of day job?

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• Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday December 23 2019, @06:16PM

  by RandomFactor (3682) on Monday December 23 2019, @06:16PM (#935574) Journal

  I think related investigation would find that a great number of the keyboard challenged youts of today would however know how to engage search from a mouse/menu action.

  --
  В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды

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• Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @08:29PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @08:29PM (#935613)

  spend their lives in their phones, ... Is it something about desktop systems that causes learning aversion,

  Much more likely it is the fact that desktop software does not have the "touch with my finger" aspect to it.

  That, or the fact that the ones that spend their lives on their phone are doing little more than infinitely scrolling through a facebook feed. And that requires knowledge of just one action, swipe up/down with finger.

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  • Re:90% of computer users are computer illiterate (Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Monday December 23 2019, @09:27PM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Monday December 23 2019, @09:27PM (#935632) Journal

    don't forget swipe right/left for dating apps

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    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

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