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

ls612

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

6LLvveMx2koXfwn

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

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.

lordnacho

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 Now it seems outdated.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

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

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

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 support system around them will develop AI psychosis though.

brabel

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.

jdw64

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.

scotty79

Recently my friend took out her phone and started googling by pecking virtual keyboard. It felt like a throwback to times long gone. Something akin to pulling out a walkman and decisively pushing in a mechanical button to start the playback.

rickdeckard

Somehow a homemade problem for Google. I never asked them to waste additional resources by injecting my blunt keyword-query into an AI-cluster and guesstimate a well-formed article from that. But here I am, with (elder) relatives sending me Google search-results on topics like they are proper articles...

scotty79

AI is becoming the access path to the internet content the way internet became access path to writing, audio and video.

otikik

well, if you let the quality of your search results go down, people will look for alternative.s

ReptileMan

Case study of 1, way above 18 - usually my search is - please research/find this in chatgpt. Google really need to fix the quality of their output and ranking.

okasaki

Well, we ditched books for Google with unknown consequences. Let people work how they want.

dist-epoch

The same discourse happened when Google appeared. "you should not google, you should use a web directory, you will get exposed to a more diverse set of sites, not just what google pre-digested for you" "you should not google, you should go to a library and search in physical media instead, google is for lazy people who can't think for themselves"

tonmoy

Top of Google’s page is just a worse version of AI, followed by three or four sponsored result, then SEO optimized crap and finally what I’m looking for is probably near bottom of the results page- I’m not surprised at young people ditching Google

YcYc10

Is this surprising? Google has been returning poor results for a long time.

khalic

On the bright side, they're probably less subject to advertisement then when using "free" search agents

ketzu

Funny enough, I believe when SEO pivots to prioritizing Ai, Google results will get better again. Currently there is probably no way Google can tune their search that won't be gamed by SEO abusers.