Can you change a lightbulb?

 The results are in: Gen Z can't change a lightbulb. Nor can we tell the difference between a  spanner and a wrench. In fact, if you give us a screwdriver we'll hand it to the police for fear of being caught with a weapon. Show us an image of a car's engine bay and we'll fall into a dribbling catatonic state; we'll spontaneously combust if you ask us to point out the battery.

A new survey, which found that my generation are the most likely to pay a professional to perform basic tasks around the home instead of attempting them, has proven that we are terrible when it comes to DIY, [Do It Yourself] but just how bad? Awful. At least in my experience. Aged 25 I'm about as good with a chisel as a chef is at controlling their anger.

Two Pairs of Stonemasons Working with Chisels and Hammers
unknown artist 
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

I remember one particularly embarrassing situation at university. My friends and I had just moved into a new house with little knowledge of how to keep it from falling apart. After a week we began to feel tired, drowsy, a little depressed. After making a tray of coagulated mac and cheese - a beloved pillar of the student diet - I noticed that the oven's rubber door seal was slightly loose.

"We are being poisoned by gas!" I screamed up the stairs. My two friends came rushing down.

"My God," said one of them. "No wonder I've been so tired."

That night we marched to Bristol Royal Infirmary's accident and emergency department. The queue was too long, so we took ourselves home and said our goodbyes.

"I'll open the windows," I said, "but if we pass away in our sleep you know that I love you both."

The next day we had a handyman come round. I told him we were lucky to be alive. I also explained that I'd turned the gas valve off at the mains.

"It's an electric oven," he said. We nodded shamefully. "And you haven't turned the gas valve off, you've just moved the valve tag 90 degrees. You haven't done anything."

Perhaps it has something to do with our education. Our parents may be handier than us, but their talents for DIY pale in comparison to their parents, and their parents before them...

Each generation are worse than the last...

(Zak Asgard, The Times 2025)

An amusing article but surely a highly exaggerated one regarding generation Z and DIY?