They may still be in a number of administrative offices, but young people are not very familiar with fax machines. This also applies to floppy disks or Walkmans, as a Bitkom survey shows. The digital association also knows why this is so.
Fax machine, floppy disk, Walkman: the technical milestones of the past are often unknown to today's youth. A good half of 6 to 18-year-olds do not know what a fax machine is, as the digital association Bitkom explained with reference to a survey. Among the 6 to 9 year olds it was even 87 percent. Many young people had also never heard of a floppy disk.
Only a third of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 stated that they knew what a floppy disk is. At least half of the 16 to 18-year-olds knew which technology was hidden behind the "memory symbol".
According to the survey, the classic Walkman was similarly unknown: 44 percent of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 knew something about this term, among 6 to 9 year olds it was only seven percent. The MP3 player was much better known: nine out of ten young people knew about it, but only 22 percent still used such a device.
"Whether listening to music, watching films, taking photos or making calls: the smartphone makes many things easier and combines functions for which several devices were previously required," explained Sebastian Klöß, Head of Consumer Electronics at Bitkom. 85 percent of young people aged ten and over used their smartphones to listen to music, and 39 percent listened to podcasts or radio plays. Bitkom interviewed 920 children and young people for the survey.
