Is Typing Still an Important Skill in the AI Age?

A much-discussed article in The Wall Street Journal, “Gen Z-ers are computer whizzes. Just don’t ask them to type”, highlights many young people’s inability to use a keyboard properly, which seems counterintuitive among a generation born and brought up in the digital age.

How concerned should we be that typing, a skill that now seems to have been left behind in the last century, and that text input speeds, the standard of which was around 60 words a minute with expert typist reaching 100, is a lost art? In 2000, 44% of students took typing courses, a figure that has now fallen to 2.5%. Most students nowadays cannot type faster than 13 words per minute.

As young people grow into adults, tapping the predictive touchscreen of a smartphone is no longer enough, and a physical keyboard is the usual interface. If you have to be constantly looking at the keys, your output will fall to about thirteen words per minute, a serious disadvantage for many jobs.

Are we at a turning point, with traditional keyboards to be replaced by some other type of interface, probably based on generative AI, capable of taking dictation? Or are smartphone keyboards going to be the universal interface? The end of the keyboard, an archaic device that owes the arrangement of its keys to an attempt to prevent the hammers that carried the characters from jamming, has been announced on countless occasions, but it never quite happens. Will its demise come in time to help a generation that no longer able to master its mysteries?

I would say we face a bigger problem, one related to how we use our devices. In general, the generation of so-called digital natives are far from being computer experts, and instead are capable only of carrying out a few, very specific, repetitive tasks, rather than those that will prepare them for the world of work. The lack of formal education aimed at taking advantage of technology has left them with a very limited understanding, generally self-learned or explained by their peers, which are far from best practices.

Should schools and colleges start teaching Gen Z-ers how to use a keyboard? I’m not sure. I tend to type very fast and without looking too much at the keyboard, although I had no formal training. However, if my usual device had not been a computer but a smartphone, I would probably be able to type faster on it today and much less on a physical keyboard as such. But as long as most admin is done via a keyboard, everything indicates that generation Z is going to be at a significant disadvantage, which will take some time to be able to solve.

Worrying, or a matter of a few weeks of practice? To be honest, I don’t know.

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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