Exploring the Search Behavior of Teenagers: A Comparative Study of Social Media and Browser Usage

Abstract

As technology advances, the use of social media is becoming more extensive, and many businesses are adapting their marketing plans to take advantage of it. Research has shown that individuals, especially teenagers, appear to be increasingly relying on social platforms like Tiktok as their primary search engine. This study aims to determine whether there is a growing number of people who use social media as their search engine. An online survey was distributed to several high school students who were asked to search for answers to questions across six different categories. The results indicate that most teenagers still use browsers and search engines like Safari, Google, or Chrome for information gathering due to their content diversity, quality, and habit. However, there was a wide variety of social media and other platforms used throughout the research, which demonstrates the potential of social media as a search engine.