Study: Young people, men more optimistic when tech fails

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:… Read more