Yesterday’s news that the most notorious man of the 21st century had been killed struck a chord with millions of Americans. The younger folks seem to have been left out in the cold, though, as Yahoo! reported in a recent blog post.
According to their search statistics, searches for “Osama Bin Laden” went up 100,000% making him the most searched person on Monday. One quarter of those searches came from those under the age of 24. Younger users, ages 13-17, were responsible for 1 in 3 of the searches for “how did Osama Bin Laden die,” and 40% of searches for “who killed Osama Bin Laden.” Most surprising, however, was Yahoo!’s report that 66% of the people searching for the phrase “who is Osama Bin Laden?” were also in the 13-17. For reference, these pubescent users would have been born in 1994-1998, meaning that the oldest amongst them were in first grade during the 9/11 attacks.
While it’s possible that they were simply too young to remember the attacks, and have — as teenagers are wont to do — ignored many of the news issues of the day, search traffic alone doesn’t imply ignorance. They could have just as easily used the search term to learn more about the deceased leader of Al Qaeda. But, if you need to make a friend feel old and despair about the future, just share the above factoids with them.
(Yahoo! Search Blog via Boing Boing)
Published: May 3, 2011 10:29 am