How TikTok became a search engine
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Generation Z not only loves TikTok, but also uses it as a search engine. In fact, this phenomenon is even wider – young people more often use services to search for information that, strictly speaking, are not intended for them. Experts say that this trend will be taken into account when developing new search engines.
TikTok in a new quality
Short video service TikTok is very popular among Generation Z (according to Encyclopædia Britannica, it includes people born between 1997 and 2011). According to Sensor Tower, this is the most downloaded app among users aged 18-24. Last year TikTok became the most visited Internet resource for the year according to Cloudflare, overtaking Google.
As it turned out, the video service, among other things, largely replaces generation Z – buzzers – traditional search engines. There, zoomers pick up restaurants, look for recipes and interviews with actors, learn how to write a letter of recommendation or do makeup.
“TikTok is becoming a one-stop-shop for content that wasn’t there in the beginning,” said Lee Rainey, director of internet and technology research at Pew Research Center.
TikTok itself is also contributing to this by adding new features, such as location-based search results, the use of keywords, or the selection of videos by the user’s interests. True, the service itself does not comment on such conclusions of scientists, noting only that it is constantly looking for new ways to improve the experience of its users.
As writes The New York Timesbuzzers who use TikTok for search say that it is user-friendly and “less biased” than Google, you can find different points of view there, in addition, there are short, simple and understandable explanations of many things.
“They want to get information very quickly, get to the point very quickly, and without having to figure everything out,” says social media consultant Adrienne Shears. In her opinion, among other things, Google zoomers do not like a large number of ads, often given out in the first lines in the search.
New ways to search
Some experts point out that it’s not just about TikTok – rather, the Internet search algorithm itself is changing. If earlier the entry point, as a rule, was search engines, now the set of options is wider. In addition to TikTok, this is, for example, Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned).
This trend is recognized by Google. At a technology conference this summer, Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan said, “According to our research, about 40% of young people who are looking for a place to eat don’t go to Google Maps or search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”
Ms. Shears also notes that buzzer searches should not be reduced to watching videos on TikTok. There they are more likely to look for more “easy” information, such as recipes or a restaurant for the evening, but for other information they will go to search engines. “When more serious information is needed, they like Google. If they watch something on TikTok, they use other methods to verify, usually using Google or news sources,” she said.
It turns out that zoomers do not abandon search engines, rather they expand the set of what they perceive as a search tool. Another platform that can now play this role is Twitter.
“I will go to TikTok for information about fashion, food or culture, because I know that users of this application provide such content, and on Twitter I will go for political information.”— tells 24-year-old brand strategist Zach Carter.
One of the authors of the American publication on technology The Verge David Pierce decided to experiment and used TikTok as a search engine for a while. He concluded that “there are things for which TikTok is absolutely the right search engine” – this is, for example, everything related to food, or the recommendation of new films and series.
But in some things it cannot compete with Google. “Where TikTok fails completely is the most basic feature of Google: quick access to other things on the Internet,” Mr. Pearce notes, citing the need to go to a particular site as an example. In addition, in his opinion, it is usually impossible to find specific information on TikTok – for example, who was the 16th president of the United States or what time the Super Bowl (the final of the American National Football League) starts.
At the same time, according to experts, how and where buzzers search for information can partly tell us what search engines will be like in the future. As Ms. Shears points out, over time, search becomes more and more visual.
Search engines are trying to take into account new trends. In April, Google launched a new Multisearch feature. It allows you to use both text and an image in your search, such as taking a picture of an orange dress and texting “green” to search for similar clothes in a different color, or taking a picture of a plant and writing “care instructions.” For some data30% of Americans under 34 use visual search when shopping, and 12% do it regularly.
Insecure Search
Francesca Tripodi, a professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, notes that the common TikTok search approach among zoomers increases the likelihood of misinformation and fakes being stumbled upon and not recognized. It also leads to widespread dissemination of this kind of information.
According to Ms. Tripodi, TikTok’s algorithms help ensure that the user stays on the platform as long as possible, which does not facilitate verification of information on third-party resources. “You don’t actually click on anything that will take you outside of the app. This complicates additional verification that the information is correct,” she said.
In September, analysts of the platform for fact-checking and search for fakes NewsGuard published a study confirming these concerns.
They studied TikTok videos on hot topics, from COVID-19 vaccinations to elections and school shootouts. After reviewing 540 videos that are issued on such requests, the authors came to the conclusion that about 20% (105 videos) of them contain disinformation, conspiracy theories, etc.
As one example, the authors of the study cite the following fact. Searching for the word “hydroxychloroquine” (an antimalarial drug purported to treat coronavirus) yields videos of how something like it can be made at home. At the same time, the person who demonstrated this recipe claimed that the resulting mixture could “cure anything.”
In response to this study, TikTok said it was removing potentially harmful information, including on medical topics, and working with fact-checkers. According to the service, in the first quarter of this year alone, it removed more than 102,000 videos that violated the rules of the platform.
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