Not so smart: 73% Brits don't understand their smart home terminology

If the most you use technology for is to check your emails and post a few cat videos on Facebook, the time has come to get with the programme.Tech is advancing at a terrifying rate, and if you don’t keep up with the latest developments, you might end up getting left behind. The (kind of) good news is, you’re not alone.Things are changing so fast, that most of us hardly bother to pay attention to new concepts unless they directly affect us. But there are some that are here to stay, so it pays to at least be familiar with the jargon that describes them. Smart homes, for example, are becoming increasingly popular throughout the UK, with many of us now in possession of an Amazon Alexa or Google Home.Leading translation and interpreting company LanguageLine Solutions decided to test the UK’s knowledge of tech buzzwords for 2018, and carried out a survey of 1,500 people across the country. And it found that most of us are still a bit clueless when it comes to these.Considering the popularity of smart homes, the buzzword that stumped Brits the most was ‘Internet of Things’. Just 27 per cent of Brits knew that it’s a network of physical appliances that send and receive data – for example when your fridge ‘talks’ to an app on your phone to tell it you’re run out of milk, or a central system in your home can control lighting, temperature or security systems. However, 43.9 per cent thought it was a search engine of unusual online information, 19 per cent thought it was an online space that requires software to view and 10.1 per cent thought it was a tech based podcast.Would you know the definition of ‘Blockchain’? 27.5 per cent of us believe it’s a word to describe a person who doesn’t forward those chain emails that keep going around. 27.3 per cent of us think it’s a system to block chain-based emails, and 13 per cent of us thought it was when multiple people block one person on social media. Less than a third (32.2 per cent) of Brits knew that a blockchain is a ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions thatOverall, Brits scored 30.8 per cent on the tech buzzwords quiz; so nearly a third of us can proudly describe ourselves as tech savvy. When broken down by gender it showed that men overall (35.3 per cent) scored higher than women (26.7 per cent). The most tech savvy age group were the 25-34 year olds, scoring 35 per cent on the test. Just behind them were the 55-64’s (33.1 per cent), the over 65’s (32 per cent), and the 35-44 year olds (28.9 per cent). Surprisingly the 18-24s only scored 28.4 per cent.

So how do you compare? To find out, take our interactive quiz and find out just how much you know!