[ssivark]

Forget the "tech industry". Even if they're just "browsing the web" and using "apps", they are constantly being shunted & nudged around by code that someone else wrote. A little proficiency in being able to tweak and control that environment they are immersed in will go a long way towards enhancing their human agency.

As computers+algorithms become increasingly ubiquitous and powerful, being able to understand and use them effectively is as important as reading and writing -- not understand this is equivalent to being illiterate in an information society. Modern society/civilization considers literacy & numeracy so damn important that it is (at least nominally) willing to sit all its youth in an educational environment for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10+ years in the hope that enough of the three Rs (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic) rub off on them. IMHO, computing is right up there in importance -- only we as a society might take decades to come to terms with that and learn how to equip people well.