This part of the actual article contradicts the implication of the title:<p><i>I asked Nielsen if he thought children’s tendency towards an app mentality was a broader trend, and that everyone would be less dependent on search in the future — both because these habituated children will age into adulthood and because alternatives to search like apps and the social web are growing in usefulness. He said he didn’t think that was necessarily the case, because kids in the upper age range of the study — 11 and 12 years old — were observed to be avid searchers.</i><p>Further, the study itself (<a href="http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids/</a>) was on how children used <i>websites</i>. Not on how children used the <i>the internet</i>. As far as I can tell, he means that children did not use the search features on a particular website. Which I rarely do, too. If I need to search a website, I usually do a search on Google. I've learned that most websites have terrible search results.<p>But even if the study had demonstrated that young children don't use search engines to navigate the internet, it wouldn't necessarily mean that future generations will use the internet differently. I think people tend to underestimate how subtle searching the internet can be. We see a single text box on Google's homepage, so it has to be simple, right? But that implies that the work to figure out what to put in that text box must happen in our heads. Being able to synthesize what you want to find into a few keywords that you think are likely to be associated with what you're looking for requires sophisticated cognition.<p>That, to me, would be an interesting psychology topic to study: how early can we effectively search the internet? Is there any connection to the existing models of cognitive development?
Did anyone really expect 6–9 year-olds to be giant searchers? 6-year-olds have only been reading for a couple of years, and are still mostly on picture books, many reading aloud. Are they supposed to be typing complex text-based queries into google to turn up mostly more text content?
<i>"kids navigate the web using bookmarks, remembering their favorite sites, and accessing paid subscription content and games."</i><p>My parents use the web like this. This isn't limited to children.<p>They navigate by clicking the address bar and clicking the URI they want. I introduced them to "proper" navigation means, like RSS, bookmarks, and tabbed browsing; they dismissed each as a gimmick. Their method has some big advantages - they only need two clicks to navigate anywhere on the web, and they're not beholden to any notifications. If they find a new webpage they like, its already in their address bar. No management needed.<p>My way is much more complicated: I jump around the web using quick typing and memorized keyboard shortcuts. I also use pages requiring management: Twitter, Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook, etc. If I ignore the web for a week, I spend days catching up or declare bankruptcy and start over. They don't need to do this, since they have no notification debt to begin with.
How much of this is parents' doing? When I showed my kids sites, I made it clear that 'this is how you get to the fun stuff', and anything not that way results in removal of computer privileges. Are kids discovering new content through some medium other than parents or previous experience?
Well, kids tend to access a few sites only. I did when I was younger. I mean: What they need to do on a browser?<p>Facebook? Wikipedia for school? Hulu? I guess kids needs are more easily found, they need to remember a few sites that cover a big percent of their total usage.<p>I mean, it's not like they have to make some _hard_ research on topics they are interested due to work or hobbies.
In my experience as a father, I'd tend to agree. There is less reason to search if you're primarily using the web for the games and interactive flash that is typically geared towards kids, but there's no reason we can't create more opportunities for kids to search. I'll give an example.<p>My younger son recently got into pokemon, and he's now doing more self-directed searches on Bulbapedia to learn about stats & strategies. Since this is something I can't help him with, he's learning how to search on his own.<p>Searching for pokemon stats, game cheats and walkthroughs sounds trivial but learning how to play with search, sort through the false positives, invalid file sizes, fake sites, etc., these skills carry over.
Which is why, for kids under 12, a simple portal of white-listed sites, such as Kongoroo(<a href="http://kongoroo.com" rel="nofollow">http://kongoroo.com</a>), is more important than Google.
Some very interesting observations there. I don't expect that search would ever go away completely. Society has always had a need to locate new, unfamiliar information. That being said, what might such a stark change in the way a new generation uses technology mean for the current corporate technology giants? Could this be trouble for a company like Google that is nearly completely leveraged on their search functionality?
What should they search for? Behavior is partly shaped by need, we need to research a lot of topics for our daily live (work,living ...) kids don't have to do that, so they don't get used to it.
They will change when they grow older.