• QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Why are people so afraid of fixing things?

    There’s a lot of answers to that question.

    Device/tool repair is typically not taught in schools, and from my perspective seems far less likely to be taught at home than it was in previous generations.

    Most people have substantially less free time than in previous decades. Sure, some things only take 10-30 minutes to repair, but learning how to make the repair is often a significant time investment.

    Devices and tools are intentionally designed to be less reparable, if only to cut costs (e.g. using glue instead of screws). Less obvious repairs take more time to learn.

    Lastly, a lot of people never learned how to do any of this; they just took their broken stuff down to a VCR repair. Repair shops nearly don’t exist anymore, and the ones that do charge a substantial sum to repair modern devices. It’s often more financially prudent to buy a new laptop than it is to replace the screen of a four-year-old one, for example.