Study: Young people, men more optimistic when tech fails

CNET News reporter Elinor Mills knows what it's like to feel frustrated by computer glitches.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

When faced with a technology breakdown, levels of optimism and frustration vary depending on age and gender, according to a new study to be released on Sunday.

That's the straight lead. The one I was pondering writing is:

I'm a late-baby-boomer woman and I hate technology.

That's not entirely true. I love technology when it works and is easy to use. But I get annoyed when my computer gets jangy or my wireless goes down. And apparently, I'm not unusual for my demographic.

"Younger users are generally much more optimistic than older adults when their gadgets fail," says the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project which sponsored the survey of 2,054 U.S. adults.

"Although young adults age 18 to 29 years old are no more likely to be able to fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices," according to the report.

There is no data on whether they were successful in fixing the devices, only that they thought they could. (Elsewhere, the data shows that of the 52 percent of tech users who are comfortable learning to use new devices on their own, 35 percent fix broken technology on their own.)

Meanwhile, the gap between the percentages feeling confident when their devices fail versus discouraged and confused narrowed as the age ranges went up.

Now for gender-based differences:

"Men were significantly more likely than women to be confident about the problem solving (76 percent versus 68 percent), but they were no less likely than women to report being confused, discouraged, or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem," the report says.

Also, men were more likely than women (33 percent to 22 percent) to fix the gadget problems by themselves. Women were more likely than men (18 percent to 12 percent) to seek help from friends or family.

What about income and education? No significant differences were found in emotional reactions to device failure there.

Overall, 48 percent of those surveyed said they need help setting up a new device and learning how to use it.

And of the people who reported having problems with their Internet connection, computer, cell phone, PDA, or other gadget, how did they solve their problems?

Fifteen percent didn't get the problem fixed at all; 38 percent said they got help from customer support; 28 percent fixed the problem themselves; 15 percent got aid from family or friends; and 2 percent found what they needed to solve the problem online.

Other studies have also explored the difference in approaches to technology by men and women.

[Lerianis]

Really, tech shouldn't 'fail' at all, unless it is a mechanical or TOTAL failure of the part in question, which I have NEVER had on any of my computers since the Packard Bell computer my parents got for my 11th birthday for me to type assignments on.

[cabso1]

That is such a fake blue screen of death.

[rhsc]

looks like you're being a lot more optimistic than the woman in the picture though. maybe that's how the research was conducted

[f.arenas]

I'm agree, where are we? at tech for dummies dot com?

[smil3e]

Glad I'm not the only one bothered by the BSOD FAIL.

[SpiritWater]

Yep, I liked to tinker with gadgets and software when I was in my teens and 20s and had no responsibilities. As I've gotten older, married, started down my carrier path, bought a house, and had kids my free time has been all but taken away. I don't have the time nor patience to tinker with something I paid for that should work as advertised. I have been using computers for over 25 years. One would believe that we would have developed an OS and software that were virtually bug free by now. Windows, Mac, and Linux all have their pains.

[bakedpatato]

epic phail. The picture is of a website displaying a Windows 9x BSOD. At least get a website displaying a NT BSOD.
(edit:darn cabso1 got there first)

[Cruton502]

I know I'm not the first but I too noticed the fake BSOD. Man that sucks that I can spot a fake from a legit BSOD. At least she has one heck of a view from her office! Forget the BSOD just have fun watching all the little cars and people scurry on the streets below :).

[williamkidd]

That may be a fake view as well, Cruton. Is it me or does that look like a version of Netscape? Perhaps Elinor should switch to Firefox to lessen the number of fake BSODs.

[Republic512]

Men have gotten use to being disappointed in life.

[derek328]

LOL, good one.

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

Regardless of Lerianis's alleged sexual bent,

I agree with the statement that tech should never fail.
Unlike a car, computers CAN have very few moving parts. As long at the power is tightly regulated, non-moving parts should outlast the owner.

Unfortunately, software is released unfinished and we accept this as SOP in the form of never ending updates and upgrades.
Also, there are no standards in the computer industry so Apple, MS, Adobe, Macromedia, Sony can all write their own proprietary codes and monopolize an area of the industry. At which point, you have to pay to play.

Nobody really cares about "a better computing experience" for ALL. It's just another greed-driven industry like the Big Oil.

[stanford_mings]

First time I am seeing a BSOD in a browser. Must be MS foray into cloud computing gone wrong.

[SteamChip]

Technology breaks down every day. I?m running an 8 year old Mac laptop that for some strange reason closes out of my Dreamweaver 4 each time I open a file a certain way. It does that in spite of updates which have been maxxed out on that machine and its program. I suppose if I spent more money and got a new laptop, onewhich would run the newer version of that software, that problem would go away. And maybe there would be other problems which would appear like when in the last century I went from system 6.07 to 6.08 and suddenly some types of errors disappeared and then some of my other programs gave problems? I eventually solved that by booting with a lower version of the Mac System Software when I only want to use those programs.

The thing is, this technology, based in part on electromagnetics in a dynamic plasmatic dance is still fragile and never always works as well as we would like. Though the computer throws things up on the screen identically 11 times in a row, may not do so that 12th time, but work fine the 13th? Did Mars align with Venus inappropriately and suddenly there is an irreproducible glitch?

I cannot explain why women are more pessimistic, but perhaps this goes along with the recent New York Times article about less women than men choosing the IT profession. Some say women want things to ?just work.? Men on the other hand don?t seem all that put off by the part of ?just working? is solving the puzzle of ?getting it to work.?

[walwebster]

Kids think they invented the internet, discovered computers and know everything (or at least know that they can google it when THEY think they need to know it), and this is news?

The apparently-unfailing ability of your readers to spot a fake BSOD says vastly more about the market's indifference to quality. It wasn't me that first said "There's one born every minute" (although nor, perhaps, was it P T Barnum, either, as is often claimed. When you need to know who it was, I guess you can always google it ...).