Why the Kids Love TikTok Search
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
TikTok’s influence is expanding well beyond the social sphere. The app is increasingly being used for the types of internet searches one would normally rely on a web search engine for. The video-based social app might not seem like the best place to find answers to your burning questions, but many users have made it their tool of choice for finding bars and restaurants to visit, movies to watch, or clothes to wear. It's a trend that has companies like Google more than a little concerned. The popularity of the app has also raised the hackles of US lawmakers, who have cited security concerns about the app and have even introduced legislation calling for a wholesale national TikTok ban.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED's Lily Hay Newman joins us to discuss why all the kids are using TikTok for search and dig into whether the app's ownership by a Chinese firm really makes it a national security threat.
Show Notes
Read Lauren’s story about her week of using TikTok for search. Here’s Lily on TikTok’s security threats. Follow all of WIRED’s coverage of TikTok.
Recommendations
Lily recommends the essay collection "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World, edited by Torie Bosch. Lauren recommends the book I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. Mike recommends the classic seasons of the show Doctor Who, which you can find on BritBox.
Lily Newman can be found on Twitter @lilyhnewman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lauren. |
| 0:00.9 | Mike. |
| 0:01.6 | Lauren, have you discovered any good new restaurants lately? I have, as a matter of fact. And I found them on TikTok. TikTok. TikTok. Yep. Not Google Maps. Nope, not Yelp. Not Google Maps. TikTok. Yeah, that's what the kids these days are doing. They're using TikTok to search for everything. So you've been using TikTok to search for everything. Yeah, I decided I was going to give it a go. |
| 0:22.6 | Do we need to have an intervention? Quay possibly, yes. All right, well, let's talk about it. Let's do it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Michael Collory. I'm a senior editor at Wired. And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. We are also joined this week by Wired Senior Writer, Lily Hey Newman. Lily, welcome back to the show. Hello. I am here in the flesh. In the room. Yes. No Zoom, no headphones. Very exciting. No closet. |
| 1:12.0 | The room is pretty small. So did you know that TikTok has a search function? People aren't just endlessly scrolling on TikTok. They're also using the platform as their go-to search tool. Google has obviously been the default option for search for about two decades now, |
| 1:17.2 | but a lot of people, particularly younger people, now go to TikTok to find just about everything online, places to eat and drink, travel tips, movie reviews, historical facts. It's all just part |
| 1:23.7 | of what has made the app so huge. And all the attention that TikTok is enjoying is also |
| 1:28.1 | why the app has made U.S. lawmakers nervous. We'll get to the real and imagined problems with |
| 1:32.9 | TikTok later on in the show. But first, let's talk about its use as a search tool. Now, |
| 1:37.7 | Lauren, for a couple of weeks, you forced yourself to only use TikTok's search box to find stuff |
| 1:42.6 | online. Tell us about how that worked out. |
| 1:46.0 | So to be totally upfront, I did cheat sometimes and I used Google. I was polysearcherists. |
| 1:52.8 | Okay. Yeah. It was just impossible to do our jobs and to only use TikTok, but I was determined to give |
| 1:58.5 | TikTok a go. I had heard that TikTok was really popular among young |
| 2:03.1 | people for search. In fact, last year, a Google search executive said at a conference that he believed |
| 2:08.3 | that 40% of younger people, you know, approximately age 18 to 24, are now turning to TikTok and |
| 2:14.3 | Instagram for search instead of Google. This, of course, is very alarming to |
| 2:17.8 | Google. And we're starting to see this thing happen where there's the rise of chat GPT, |
| 2:23.1 | and Google feels threatened by that for search. There's the rise of social search. Google has |
| 2:28.6 | tweaked its app to make it look a little bit more like visual and fun and hip to like basically |
| 2:33.8 | replicate the TikTok experience for search. So Google is like... to make it look a little bit more like visual and fun and hip to like basically replicate |
| 2:34.4 | the TikTok experience for search. So Google is like hearing all of these competitors like kind |
... |
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