4.3 The future of Internet search

We developed so far only the current characteristics of search engine users and saw that the situation is quite critical. Is this situation can change in the future?

An interesting study has been recently published (UCL – University College London. (2008). Information behavior of the researcher of the future.) on this subject focusing on the “Google generation”.

The Google generation is defined as Internet users born after the year 1993.

Young students are now more comfortable with computers than with pens and papers however as the study show it does not mean that the Google generation is expert in finding information on the Web. Some behaviors linked with what have been written in this thesis are interesting:

- The information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems; (UCL – University College London. (2008). Information behavior of the researcher of the future.)

- Young people have unsophisticated mental maps of what the internet is, often failing to appreciate that it is a collection of networked resources from different providers;

- Many young people do not find library-sponsored resources intuitive;

- They spend little time in evaluating the information;

- They make very little use of advanced search facilities, assuming that search engines "understand" their queries;

- They are more competent with technology but use very simple applications and facilities;

- They have very high expectations regarding ICT;

- It seems that most teachers are information literate however their

skills and attitudes towards information literacy is not transferred to pupils; (Merchant, L./Hepworth, M. Information literacy of teachers and pupils in secondary schools. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 34(2) 2002, p.81.)

- They simply do not recognize that they have a problem: there is a big gap between their actual performance in information literacy tests and their self-estimates of information skill and library anxiety;

The consumer behavior described in chapter 3.2.2 and the one of young students is not really different. It is even worst because users born before 1993 were not in a search engine dependency configuration. Former search engine users have not been well trained and are not training properly the young generation.

The study goes even deeper by highlighting another critical point which is that searchers have different information needs at their time of their lives:

Significant age-related differences in article discovery methods

Young people are far more digital addicted users than any others. Attitudes towards search has totally changed.

The situation is already critical for "old users" but at least is compensated by the use of other sources of information whereas it is not the case for young users.