Over the past 25 years, the number of US high schools teaching typing has plummeted.

While about 44 per cent of students who graduated high school in 2000 took a keyboarding course, by 2019 that figure had nosedived to a 2.5 per cent, according to the US Department of Education.

Educators often assume that Gen Z, being digital natives, already know how to type because they’re so familiar with tech. After all, nearly half of teens say they are online “almost constantly,” according to a survey from Pew Research Center. But greater access to laptops, tablets, and smartphones doesn’t automatically translate into typing skills.

This means that Gen Z are doing two fingered typing at about 13 words a minute.  The result is having a knock on effect in colleges were kids are resorting to speech-to-text software because their typing is to slow. Unfortunately, such tools insert grammatical errors.

Even worse were dumber Gen Zs who had been convinced by the Tame Apple Press that they could write papers using their iPhones or iPads. This faith has extended the time taken to do homework from minutes to centuries.

Between March and May, 39 per cent of the assignments that students submitted through the online platform Canvas were uploaded from mobile devices. Schools use Canvas to distribute content to students and as a place for students to turn in coursework. “

Teachers, meanwhile, completed more than 90 per cent of their work on Canvas on a computer.

As more states move their analogue standardised tests to computers, Tim Dikun, COO at Teaching.com, the parent company of Typing.com, expects more schools to reprioritize typing education.

 “Students will have higher test scores when they don’t have to think about how to type and can think about the content they are creating,” he said.

 Already, Dikun says Typing.com has seen increased demand for typing education programmes in states such as New York and Texas that are implementing computer-based exams.