Only 9% of the nation scored full marks on a UK curriculum-inspired technology quiz
36% thought Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, invented the mobile phone
Think you could do better? Take the quiz by e2save to find out
You may think you’re a tech-spert, but can you correctly identify what URL stands for or who invented the mobile phone?
Online smartphone retailer, e2save, tested participants with a series of UK curriculum-inspired tech questions and found that 91% were unable to answer all seven questions correctly, despite the questions being suitable for school children.
The question that people struggled with the most was who invented the mobile phone, with over half (52%) of participants choosing the incorrect answer. More than a third of those who took the test (36%) thought Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, actually invented the mobile phone. A further 16% thought Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, invented the smartphone when it was, in fact, Martin Cooper.
The nation found the most success with a question asking, “If information is stored on the internet, what is called what?”, with 91% correctly identifying the answer as Cloud Computing.
Perhaps surprisingly for some, a higher proportion of those aged between 55 and 64 achieved a perfect score compared to their younger counterparts.
The top five age groups who scored a perfect score of 100% are:
Delving into the other questions people struggled to answer correctly, more than one in five (23%) thought 5G stood for ‘five gigabytes’, when it really stands for ‘fifth generation’ and a quarter (24%) do not know what an algorithm is, with 19% believing the term relates to a file to save memory.
Over half (52%) of those quizzed on Twitter’s original character limit answered the question incorrectly, with 45% believing it was a 100 character limit when it was actually originally set at 140 characters.
Commenting on the findings, Andrew Cartledge, mobile expert at e2save, says: “Technology is part of most of our daily lives, we’re constantly surrounded by tech in one way or another, so it’s easy to think you’re tech-savvy when it comes to commonly-heard terms.
“These questions are all inspired by the technology curriculum, so it goes to show that school kids can definitely teach us a thing or two! Although with that said, it was interesting to see those in the 55-64 age bracket were the most clued up on tech, so it’s not all about the youth. There are plenty of resources out there that can help you get clued up on tech, including things like Google Garage or how-to guides from many of the major manufacturers, so we’d encourage people to take a look if they want to learn something new.”
To test your tech knowledge and take the e2save quiz, please visit: https://www.e2save.com/community/test-your-tech-knowledge/
