[ghaff]

>It's not generational warfare

It's stereotyping. How would you and others feel if I were to rephrase that to something along the lines of "Almost no one really needs wired Internet except for all those teens and twenty-somethings who do nothing but watch video on their phones 20 hours a day"?

A lot of older people have a heck of a lot more hands-on experience with using computers than those whose experience is mostly limited to smartphones and tablets.

My overall point is that broad brush generalizations about age groups are often not useful.

[reificator]

> How would you and others feel if I were to rephrase that to something along the lines of "Almost no one really needs wired Internet except for all those teens and twenty-somethings who do nothing but watch video on their phones 20 hours a day"?

Entirely neutral emotionally and in agreement.

Demographics who grew up with the internet use it more and for higher bandwidth things. Seems pretty intuitive and non offensive to me.

My grandfather in particular has had home computers since the 70s. There are exceptions. But that doesn't invalidate the point being made. My mother for instance, is slightly ahead of the average for her age technologically. (In some ways at least.). But she's literally done exactly what the post that started this describes. When I moved out and stopped paying the internet bill a few months later, she had no interest in starting her own. Hasn't had anything but mobile since.

[ghaff]

I don't actually disagree with the general premise. I'm fairly certain that older people do not, as a whole, use as much Internet bandwidth as younger people--if only because they don't have the habit of watching YouTube a lot, may very well still have cable TV, etc.

I would just prefer that discussions here avoided casual stereotypes about "grandmas" or, for that matter, Millennials. A comment along the lines of "Many casual Internet users--which includes quite a few older people--don't need wired Internet if they have or could get good mobile service" would be totally unobjectionable.