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Comment by codinhood | Hacker News Reader

AI seems obvious, but social video? Are they saying people watch TikToks instead of reading Wikipedia, or people who used to look things up don’t bother anymore because of TikTok?

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Yes -- sadly, the hottest new search engines are YouTube and TikTok.

tiktok seems to be the primary medium by which Gen Alpha obtain their news and knowledge

Gen Z as well. Many well into their 20s heavily consume tiktok.

No it's not. It's the primary medium by which they get their entertainment.

TikTok replaces YouTube and Tumblr before that. It's not like people are watching it instead of reading history books or the New Yorker.

And just because you use TikTok doesn't mean you don't check actual news headlines or listen to two-hour-long podcasts.

The younger generation absolutely use Tiktok search to find information.

I'm sure they do. Is that their primary source? Do they use nothing else? Is any of that information put to economic use in their lives or is it just curiosity?

They buy a ton of stuff from Tik-Tok and Instagram ads - yes.

The line of questioning was about news and knowledge, not ads. Ads in anything will affect people's purchases, so that's not evidence for what that question was actually going for.

You probably mean Gen Z. Alpha's oldest members are 14-15. Middle schoolers have never been particularly well read.

Here's a direct quote from a WSJ article the other day: "She searched for the drug on TikTok, her go-to information source"

gift link: https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/anti-depressants-lifesty...

Yeah, I was very surprised by that. Article says:

> “younger generations are seeking information on social video platforms rather than the open web.”

YouTube I'll buy it, but the search function in Instagram and tiktok is beyond useless!

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