Question for me is does it actually matter? Do they care? And will understanding this actually make them want to engage with the topic further?
Even me growing up back in the Amiga 500 days I couldn't really care less how the machine actually worked, the impetus to learn how to control it came from the want to make my own games not to understand how it did something as boring as add two numbers together.
But more importantly, does it matter? At a collective level, absolutely. When there's a layer of a system you don't understand, you introduce a couple of potential problems.
1. The system has a flaw at that level and you don't know what to do about it. A real world example of this is hardware manufactured by the lowest bidder not matching the specifications, potentially introducing bugs that are impossible to debug without an understanding of what's happening at the hardware level.
2. The system has a potential exploit at a level you don't understand, and someone uses it to take advantage of you. This is basically all home owners getting their computers infected with malware. Sure, they can run their antivirus in 99.9% of cases, but if they ever get a virus that isn't in their antivirus' list, then they're effectively out a computer.
So yes, people should know how a computer works (at least in principle) at every level. This is essentially the same as knowing how your car works so when it breaks you can fix it instead of sending it to a mechanic for overpriced repairs.
Question for me is does it actually matter? Do they care? And will understanding this actually make them want to engage with the topic further?
Even me growing up back in the Amiga 500 days I couldn't really care less how the machine actually worked, the impetus to learn how to control it came from the want to make my own games not to understand how it did something as boring as add two numbers together.