Hi I think this is an interesting topic, of when to introduce someone to computers and how. I don't share your conservative sentiments Becky but this is something every parent ought to think about. I want to address some concerns and criticisms, that those not exposed to computers at a young age would struggle later on.
it's not exactly a correlation that just because you were exposed at a young age to computers that you'd be really good at it or expert at it. As a matter of fact computers have become easier to use. The Graphical User Interface has been improving. And this helps and perhaps why you see more and more older people feel at ease with computers also. If you take a young person today, say 19 who perhaps have been playing with technology since they were 5 and introduce them to the older OS that only has mostly a Command Line Interface such as DOS, they would be at a lost. When I was 21 or 22, there was a girl 15 and she knew how to use the computer better than her mother did. But something went slightly amiss and she couldn't find where her mp3 files went. I did a search for files with the extension .mp3 and found them for her. Now I did that through Windows, but I also knew how to search through DOS, the command line, knew how to make batch files (.bat) haha remember those?, knew how to reformat my whole c drive, partition it and install Windows 95 all over again which I did more than 20 times. I personally did not learn computers till I was 18.
Even today, not every young person messes with the minute details of the settings, and are reluctant to if they have to. They still have to take programming/coding and A class certification classes to learn & pass exams. And many would be at a lost face to face the Linux command line, still in use today. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if many of them have never heard of Linux.
