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Study: Young users (9 to 18Y) ditch Google for AI, with unknown consequences

23 points giuliomagnifico 46 minutes ago 20 comments

ls612 40 minutes ago | parent

Never mind kids, I’ve largely started asking Claude any nontrivial questions that I used to Google. It’s night and day the difference.

codedokode 31 minutes ago | parent

Yes if you search anything in Google, you typically get sites that have a cookie panel, ask to allow notifications, show "Login With Google" popover taking the keyboard focus, and lot of ads before you can even read the content. No wonder people do not want to use Google anymore.

netdevphoenix 24 minutes ago | parent

To be honest, that's the fault of the websites themselves. Google is just an amplifier of a world web wide problem.

luka598 17 minutes ago | parent

While true, google can punish them by ranking the offending sites lower than non offending ones.

Macha 10 minutes ago | parent

I think we can blame google for the login with google prompts given they provide an SDK for that exact use case.

Gareth321 7 minutes ago | parent

It's symbiotic. Google has been aggregating data from these websites for years to serve as summaries in search, reducing traffic to the sites. More pernicious is AMP, where the site is basically copied to the Google server. This force websites to use AdSense and structure the content in certain ways. If a site doesn't want to use AdSense, or allow Google to summarise the site, it gets down-ranked in search. A death sentence. Further, Google's algorithms routinely promote spam because this is most profitable for Google. Hiding the important information 3/4 of the way down a 10,000 word article with a hundred different kinds of ads on the page. Since the "good" websites have to compete with these spam websites, they either adapt or give up monetisation.

One of the more horrifying stories to read was about [Code Yellow back in 2019.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-2019-code-yellow-blurr...) Google's algorithms were getting too good. Users were finding what they wanted too fast. They'd type in their query, the first result was good, then the user would close the tab. For Google, this meant less ad revenue. They wanted users to stay on Google for longer. *So they chose to degrade the algorithm quality.* Users would have to click multiple links to find the information they wanted, and inside every link was ads served by Google. This is one of the pivotal moments in one of the worst cases of enshitification in software history.

amelius 17 minutes ago | parent

For most things, it's the same with Gemini and it is faster.

Tade0 11 minutes ago | parent

The other day I found that one old game of which I originally caught just a glimpse and remembered only a fragment of what one voice actor was saying is in fact Lords of Magic.

I attempted to google this a few years ago to no avail.

o_m 4 minutes ago | parent

I use Kagi Assistant. It doesn't just give a summary, it is more like a personal "Googler"/web surfer. I feel like I'm involved in the process.

My coworkers use Google and often quote back the AI summary me instead of checking the source and referring to that. It's scary seeing even those with higher education behave like this.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 35 minutes ago | parent

Very skeptical - the source material is

    studies published between 2022 and 2025 that examined the use of GenAI in relation to students
If GenAI = LLMs then ChatGPT made public release in October 2022 which gives precisely zero time to generate data on impact in students. Also

    173 records (studies) were included in the review
Really? 173 peer reviewed studies based on this niche in less than 3 years. I shudder to think the quality of those constituent studies. Not questioning the results just the means of getting them.

echelon 33 minutes ago | parent

I barely use Google Search for anything anymore.

It was garbage before LLMs got good, and the deep thinking models leapfrog whatever it used to be in its heydey.

konart 31 minutes ago | parent

This days you don't relly click those links much. Most of the time its the Google AI Mode all the way down.

lordnacho 20 minutes ago | parent

AI is my default for just about any search now. From today:

How did Cantor come up with his diagonal proof? It seems to have been dreamed out of nowhere

Why are there advertisements for a shampoo containing caffeine? Does caffeine do something useful other than when you drink it?

What happens in sense and sensibility?

All of them give a decent answer, with the ability to ask follow ups. Eg, how does S&S compare with Pride and Prejudice? What about more recent novels connecting romantic choices with economic choices?

All of them give you links to source material, in case you suspect they are just making it up.

At the start of the millennium, Google search changed everything about how I look for information. Now it seems outdated.

fransje26 14 minutes ago | parent

Well, if Google search actually returned anything useful, other than the SEO-rigged trash and AI generated slop it pushes forward as results to queries, then there would be a reason to actually use Google.

For the time being, AI seems to be doing a much better job in most cases, so as we say: So long Google!

jfewhfuehg 13 minutes ago | parent

Most teachers now use AI for lesson planning (talk to any teacher). Some even for marking when they can.

Children probably use more critical thinking in the playground and interacting with other children than in class, because classwork is mostly slop anyway.

LLMs are not going to one shot answers in Minecraft through the chat UI. Possibly a more effective resource than checkbox activities at teaching "critical thinking" (abused term in education).

qoez 9 minutes ago | parent

The non overreacting take is probably that young people will still have plenty of interaction with parents and their peers etc to develop critical thinking as a guard against deception and whatever else. Definitely some low single digit people without a social network around them will develop AI psychosis though.

brabel 7 minutes ago | parent

Even Google itself is now just asking AI. Usually the AI summary Google returns is more useful than the links. I get really annoyed when I query something and no AI summary is given as the links it returns these days are trash.

pants2 1 minute ago | parent

Ironically because most of the results are just pages of AI-written SEO fluff. At least the Google AI summary gets to the point.

jdw64 5 minutes ago | parent

Googling itself lacks credibility. Most of the results are plastered with Google ads. And since Google ads mostly skip any kind of review process, there are a lot of bad ads.