Media Monday - March 10

GUYS. 1 in 10 Americans thinks HTML is an STD. Wait… really? For today’s Media Monday, I thought we’d chat about this. I’m not exactly technologically savvy. I don’t really know a lot about HTML, despite taking a very beginner course about it in college. But, I do know this. It’s NOT an STD. [Really ironic timing with last week’s episode of Brooklyn 99, when Boyle shares his STDs… Save The Date cards, duh…].

Vouchercloud.net, a coupons website, conducted a study to determine how knowledgeable users are when it comes to tech terms. And the answer would be… not very. Apparently a lot of people need to learn some tech terms. Even my mom, who once picked up her phone after receiving a text message and said “hello,” [CAVEAT: I love my mom. She’s one of my best friends and she thought this was funny.] knew these people were hilariously wrong.

Some of the other findings include:

• 77% of respondents could not identify what SEO means. SEO stands for "Search-Engine Optimization" [Family consensus of two engineers, myself and my mom – this one was a hard one, don’t know if all of us would have picked the right answer either.] 27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device. [1 in 4 people. SERIOUSLY?]
• 42% said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship." A motherboard is usually a circuit board that holds many of the key components of a computer.
• 23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot. It is actually an audio file. [I’ve never seen Star Wars and even I know its C3PO]
• 18% identified "Blu-ray" as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.
• 15% said they believed "software" is comfortable clothing. Software is a general term for computer programs. [More people think software is clothing than HTML is a disease.. how is this possible?]
• 12% said "USB" is the acronym for a European country. In fact, USB is a type of connector.
• Despite the incorrect answers, 61% of the respondents said it is important to have a good knowledge of technology in this day and age. 

Would you have known the answers to these questions?