Fast, addictive and eye-catching: TikTok is already the search engine for generation Z | Technology

When it seemed that Google was so consolidated that it was going to be invincible, generation Z (those born between the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s) have begun to turn their backs on it, taking TikTok as a substitute. This trend has not gone unnoticed by Google: Prabhakar Raghavan, company director, acknowledged during a conference that, according to his internal studies, 40% of that generation uses TikTok or Instagram to search, instead of Google or Maps, as picked up the specialized media TechCrunch.

“Before, for all the doubts I could have, I immediately went to Google, but now I go to TikTok first because of the trust it generates in me and because of the quality of the content. Only in the event that I am not convinced by what I see there or that nothing related to what I am looking for appears, I use Google, and the truth is that this happens quite rarely”, acknowledges Rosa Rodríguez, a 22-year-old user. Like her, other young people go to the platform of Chinese origin instead of the traditional search engine, above all because of the speed it offers and because, instead of having to read a text to find certain information, a person on the other side of the screen It sums it up in a few seconds.

Fátima Martínez, consultant for marketing digital and social networks and author of The TikTok Book, assures that this platform has revolutionized everything: “I think it is a totally different generation from the previous ones. TikTok gives you one minute videos, where they tell you at full speed something you want to know. For example, with restaurant searches, you can go to Google and find what people think and see four photos, but what they do is go to TikTok and see videos of people who are in the restaurant, see what they eat, how they eat it, if it’s pretty or not… These young people are much more used to everything visual, and they’re very lazy,” he says.

However, for Ubaldo Cuesta, Professor of Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid, this is not an exclusive issue for young people, but rather a more general one: “All of society is evolving towards liquid thinking. As Bauman said, we are moving towards a liquid society and superficial thinking. Why is this happening? In the first place, because thinking tires; instead, see the image no. It is much easier to move towards a liquid society than to move towards a society of reflection and thought”, he insists. Of course, he considers that young people have become “what Sartori calls the homo videns, in a man who lives by the image”.

The visual leads users to better absorb content with less effort. “The brain is fundamentally visual and reacts very well to this type of stimuli, so television and what would come later, like TikTok, very easily captures our attention,” explains the professor, who adds: “The image, of Somehow, it has defeated word and thought, as the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut explained.

While visual doesn’t necessarily come at a high speed on long video platforms like YouTube, on TikTok it’s often the common feature of everything uploaded. It is very difficult to find a 10-minute video and the most common ones usually last a few seconds, not even a minute. To this is added a search for evasion that explains, in part, the phenomenon of influencers and of the idyllic and romantic contents with which the user dreams.

Fátima Martinez believes that “children try to run away from the real world because they don’t like it and they don’t see a future. They want to live from day to day and the day is so short that they need to do everything as quickly as possible. They don’t think in the future, but in the now, and to live it they have become accustomed to everything being very fast”. According to developer data software HubSpot, Gen Z prefers to learn new things through video, rather than text or other traditional formats, and also pays attention to content for an average of eight seconds.

For Ubaldo Cuesta, this has a very important relationship with the Carpe Diem and the pursuit of fun, something sociologist Neil Postman referred to as “playing yourself to death.” “Since the image is much more passionate, deep down it is the triumph of passion over reason. In addition, this fits in with the audiovisual market system, which needs many audiences and seeks them through passion, entertainment…”, insists the professor.

According to a study by the UK Communications Regulatory Office, the top three sources of information (and not just entertainment) for young people and teenagers are Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

However, José Luis Sanz, a 19-year-old user, assures that he continues searching on Google and reading sports information in written newspapers: “I am traditional,” he explains. Of course, when it comes to product reviews or technical explanations, go directly to the video. Similarly, Sofia, a 16-year-old user, also continues to use Google to search for information, except for some influencer.

Rosa Rodríguez explains that, unlike traditional search engines, she believes that TikTok offers “immediacy and proximity to the sender”, as in the case of health professionals. “They offer content with a much more understandable language, they generate more trust than a text on Google, which does not offer you much more than those few written lines and where, furthermore, there is no possibility of a reciprocal relationship,” adds the user. .

Professor Cuesta insists that the fact that there are “so many evaluators” (users who review and analyze services or products) on platforms like TikTok or YouTube “fits with this society, which no longer trusts what the authority, institutions or someone more or less serious like Google, but trusts more what a friend says and likes someone to appear on camera telling it, like a influencer which, moreover, gives you the impression that he is an acquaintance of yours”.

If artificial intelligence is added to the visual quality, immediacy and confidence offered by TikTok content, the result is a series of infinite information that, moreover, really interests us. “That has also changed the mentality of the kids. TikTok shows you what you want to see. It is totally addictive and it is designed to be so, in such a way that you are running videos vertically at full speed, it is showing you what you want to see and it puts new videos on you to discover things”, explains the expert in marketing. And he adds: “Google has no choice but to adapt to the new generations, as it is doing with artificial intelligence and 3D.”

You can follow THE COUNTRY TECHNOLOGY in Facebook Y Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.