What Google Discovered About Gen Z Is Alarming

Generation Z, born between the late 1990s and early 2000s, is a group of people who were exposed to advances in technology and social media from an early age. As digital natives, it is common for them to spend a large portion of their time sharing or watching content on their devices.

But with the amount of digital information they see every day, how can they choose what is truly useful and what is not?

A study by Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google, sought to answer this and other questions about Generation Z’s online behavior. These were their conclusions.

Older generations tend to seek out sources of information about what interests them, but the same is not true for Generation Z. According to Jigsaw’s research, young people in this group typically just read headlines and then head to the comments section to see what others are saying and decide what to believe. points out Business Insider .

They also trust more what their favorite influencers have to say on a certain topic, especially if they share their own experience or speak their same “language.” If they come to read an article and find it too long, they will avoid it.

Another important finding is that they do not differentiate between searching for information on the Internet and interacting with other users. Most of their time, they perform a behavior called time passes: If they want to find answers to a topic, they turn to social media search engines which, thanks to an algorithm, can filter out what might really interest them. This is how they digest all the overwhelming amount of information that is out there in cyberspace.

Younger Gen Zers also don’t trust pages that have paywalls, ads, or ask for subscriptions from the public, as they see them as clickbait.

Jigsaw emphasizes that these results do not mean that this group of people is less intelligent. They clearly know how they could find information more deeply, for example to use it in crucial discussions or decisions in their lives. The fact is that they have little interest in doing so.

“They are tapping into these essential literacy skills in a very small proportion of the time they spend online.” Beth Goldberg, head of research at Jigsaw, told Business Insider.

When they want to know if certain diet or wellness methods are effective, Gen Zers use their bodies to get those answers.

According to the study, if what they tested really worked, they believe it has more credibility than seeing the results in a larger group.