by NEPatriot on 9/15/10, 2:08 PM with 20 comments
by scott_s on 9/15/10, 3:08 PM
I asked Nielsen if he thought children’s tendency towards an app mentality was a broader trend, and that everyone would be less dependent on search in the future — both because these habituated children will age into adulthood and because alternatives to search like apps and the social web are growing in usefulness. He said he didn’t think that was necessarily the case, because kids in the upper age range of the study — 11 and 12 years old — were observed to be avid searchers.
Further, the study itself (http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids/) was on how children used websites. Not on how children used the the internet. As far as I can tell, he means that children did not use the search features on a particular website. Which I rarely do, too. If I need to search a website, I usually do a search on Google. I've learned that most websites have terrible search results.
But even if the study had demonstrated that young children don't use search engines to navigate the internet, it wouldn't necessarily mean that future generations will use the internet differently. I think people tend to underestimate how subtle searching the internet can be. We see a single text box on Google's homepage, so it has to be simple, right? But that implies that the work to figure out what to put in that text box must happen in our heads. Being able to synthesize what you want to find into a few keywords that you think are likely to be associated with what you're looking for requires sophisticated cognition.
That, to me, would be an interesting psychology topic to study: how early can we effectively search the internet? Is there any connection to the existing models of cognitive development?
by jacobolus on 9/15/10, 3:03 PM
by jakevoytko on 9/15/10, 4:33 PM
My parents use the web like this. This isn't limited to children.
They navigate by clicking the address bar and clicking the URI they want. I introduced them to "proper" navigation means, like RSS, bookmarks, and tabbed browsing; they dismissed each as a gimmick. Their method has some big advantages - they only need two clicks to navigate anywhere on the web, and they're not beholden to any notifications. If they find a new webpage they like, its already in their address bar. No management needed.
My way is much more complicated: I jump around the web using quick typing and memorized keyboard shortcuts. I also use pages requiring management: Twitter, Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook, etc. If I ignore the web for a week, I spend days catching up or declare bankruptcy and start over. They don't need to do this, since they have no notification debt to begin with.
by wmoulder on 9/15/10, 2:59 PM
by barredo on 9/15/10, 3:01 PM
Facebook? Wikipedia for school? Hulu? I guess kids needs are more easily found, they need to remember a few sites that cover a big percent of their total usage.
I mean, it's not like they have to make some _hard_ research on topics they are interested due to work or hobbies.
by JoeAltmaier on 9/15/10, 3:17 PM
by cmars232 on 9/16/10, 2:37 AM
My younger son recently got into pokemon, and he's now doing more self-directed searches on Bulbapedia to learn about stats & strategies. Since this is something I can't help him with, he's learning how to search on his own.
Searching for pokemon stats, game cheats and walkthroughs sounds trivial but learning how to play with search, sort through the false positives, invalid file sizes, fake sites, etc., these skills carry over.
by david927 on 9/15/10, 3:44 PM
by yock on 9/15/10, 2:50 PM
by fbailey on 9/15/10, 10:08 PM