I was reading an article a couple of days ago about the current state of the smart home and one of the points trying to be made was that home automation in general and Home Assistant specifically wasn’t at all useful for…
the non-tech savvy
old folks
the first point I agree with to a degree depending on the extent you want to do any “roll your own” solutions.
the second point got me thinking…
I know I spend a lot of time on the forums helping others (more so in the past) so I consider myself a fairly advanced user. And I know that I’m the one in my family who they come to if they have a technical question on lots of topics. And I’m also what most would consider an “old folk” (I’m proudly in the “Boomer” age group).
The article seemed to be implying if you are an older person then the concept of home automation will be beyond your understanding simply based on your age alone and has nothing to do with other factors - like you being a tech savvy user or not.
Lots of older people are tech savvy and lots of younger people are basically Luddites. And of course it goes the other way.
It seems to me that many if not most of the users who are on here tend to be older rather than younger.
So just out of curiosity this poll was born.
It would also be nice to be able to correlate the age of the pollster with their own perceived skill level with Home Assistant so I’ve given two options based on your age range.
Thanks for your (honest ) participation. Whichever way it goes I think it will be interesting.
(and if this is for some reason not allowed then I apologize and will remove it)
Youtube Analytics does a decent job of breaking down some things for you. I mention this because I have a YT channel focused on HA & smart home tech. It’s not a SUPER huge channel or anything, but I get ~35k views per month.
My viewers are 99.7% male (pretty sure my wife is the .3%), and over 44% of my viewers are aged 45 or older. (YT breaks it down by decade but I was too lazy to type all that out so I just added them up)
The single biggest cohort in my audience is aged 35-44, at just under 31%.
I forgot I voted in this. Wow… I’m in a minority here. And at the same time I’m surprised at the reach HA has as shown in this poll and the added data in the post talking about YouTube analytics.
It looks like the 50 - 70 year old demographic has a really strong representation. And I’m not really surprised. I kind of figured that’s how it was going to play out.
I’m in the 30-39 advanced users category. Neither old nor young, I just like tech and challenging myself with logic problems. I look at the older category and think of my parents. There are days my parents can barely figure out their iPhone. But then they surprise me and tell me they setup a Netgear Orbi network and Eufy Doorbell all by themselves. They do lament that it’s sometimes hard to find a paper manual and even then it sometimes just points them to a YouTube video. They are of the generation of learning by reading/doing.
Same here. But I’d prefer an electronic manual. I can always print out a page if I have to.
It’s not that I’m unwilling to use YouTube. That’s probably my primary source for entertainment.
The problem is I’m generally too pressed for time to sit through (or skip over) long, boring introductions and unrelated footage to find the one piece of information I need to do a job.
With a manual I can search for the information I want, or look it up in the index. If it involves coding, I can copy and paste directly from a manual or web page.
I think every person regardless of age has different abilities where tech comes in to play.
My personal story is that we were sitting around the dinner table with my 25 - 35 year old kids and the conversation went to “old people just don’t know things”. I then looked at them and mentioned how I (at 61) am the one that everybody I know comes to when they need help figuring out techie type stuff.
With such a biased intro it is a question whether the people voting in this poll are a representative group of course. You may also need to know the age distribution of people visiting the forum VS Discord, Facebook and other community channels.
What I find difficult to determine is where the difference between ‘advanced’ and ‘intermediate’ starts. In my experience, when you ask this to people, the answer says more about their personality than their skill level.
Some may see themselves as advanced if they edited a file in YAML without errors. Others may put the bar at at least 10 PRs merged in Ha core.
I’m 46 and I would call myself advanced in technology in general, but intermediate at most in Ha.
I think that it just gives the reason for the interest in the subject. the bias is in the eye of the beholder.
I really doubt that the intro should put someone off of voting.
If a young person agrees with the article then they would vote as a young advanced user to prove the article correct.
if an older person disagrees with the article then they would vote as an older advanced user to show that it was wrong.
And just as in the bias condition the determination as to whether they classify themselves as intermediate and below or advanced is in the eye of the beholder.
I think most people are self-aware enough to know where they likely are; especially if they are solidly in either camp. In the fringes it isn’t that big of a deal.
It’s not really meant to a scientific investigation, just interesting.
) participation. Whichever way it goes I think it will be interesting.