My practical skills are so bad I had to get dad to change battery. It’s time schools taught kids to be more hands-on
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BACK in the day, DIY meant nailing a picture frame to a wall, bleeding a radiator or painting the bedroom wall. Today, to Gen Z and millennials, it means handyman website Task Rabbit, or a Rampant Rabbit. Research has shown young Britons are increasingly outsourcing the most basic of tasks, so afraid of hard moderate work are they — or clueless.
![[A man uses a screwdriver to install a shelf.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/focused-young-man-holding-screwdriver-963543252.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed aged 28-43 admitted they could not change a ceiling lightbulb. Of those, 20 per cent said going up a ladder would be “too dangerous”. As a geriatric millennial, I’m ashamed to admit, I am absolutely, categorically, 100 per cent one of these useless waste of spaces, AKA a “GOTDIT”: Get Others To Do It.
![[Man installing a smoke detector.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NINTCHDBPICT000963543211.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
I could no sooner put a shelf up than translate Sophocles’ Antigone from its original form, or bash out Bach’s Schubler Chorales on the organ. Only 70 per cent of those polled could identify a flathead screwdriver. I am one of the 30 per cent. Fifty-seven per cent of Gen Zs said they knew how to add air to a car tyre, fewer said they could fit a windscreen wiper blade, a task that can take less than a minute. A task I wouldn’t know where to start on.
![[Billboard outside a Vue cinema advertising The Traitors.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/traitors-billboard-outside-vue-cinema-963277016_d1965a.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
My poor dad, who is 76 and battling various health conditions, regularly drives down to my house in London to repair things. He once flogged over to change the batteries in my bleeping smoke alarm. No job too small for my septuagenarian father who, presumably, hoped he’d enjoy a life of leisure once I turned 18/he retired.
![[Claudia Winkleman in a black jacket and boots.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/10-01-2025-961225583.jpg?strip=all&w=639)
