90% Of People Don't Know About Ctrl+F, Apparently

A recent post at The Atlantic has called attention to the statistic that approximately 90% of people do not know about Ctrl+F “find” functionality. The topic came up during a discussion with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist for Google. About a year ago, after having an experience with a school-bus trainer who spent about five minutes looking for text in a document, Russell decided to do some research into how many people were unaware of the glory that is Ctrl+F. The results were staggering.

According to a survey of over 2,000 American Internet users, Russell found that 90% did not know about the find function. School teachers didn’t fare much better, among them about 50% knew of the function. There’s not much information on the exact demographic covered by the survey, but hopefully things have changed in the intervening year. Just in case they haven’t, let’s get this story passed around. Ctrl+F doesn’t “save lives” but get a few more people using it and you might be able to save the time-equivalent of one.

(via The Atlantic)

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Eric Limer