Today's technology isn't easier: it's just more restricted. The things you can do are pre-programmed and individually specified, rather than emergent from the design of the system, which means there's much less common logic to it.

I think the parent is conflating easiness with lack of complexity. Lack of complexity does make doing things less confusing if you have less options to choose from

Really. This worries me as well

We are seeing young people that can't work around Word/Excel (sure, or their cloud equivalent) to do basic tasks like creating a table or basic formatting

When I was in high school we traded files amongst ourselves using burned CDs and flash drives. My nieces and nephews don't understand what a file format is.

Thank goodness Microsoft hides file extensions by default. We wouldn't want these children learning!

Major /s

I think it's about the same amount of kids are tech savvy now as when I was a kid. Which is also scary, of course, but I don't think it's really less. It's just that non savvy kids are still immersed in tech; when I was growing up, kids could get through k-12 only touching a computer twice a year, if that's what worked for them/their families.

I don't worry much. I'd prefer if they knew more, but somehow kids were always able to learn the sciences or engineering. Just because they don't learn on their own, it doesn't mean they'll never know it.