Social Influencers

Phil: So Sally, Google's Senior Vice President said in a conference this month, that new internet users don't have the expectations and the mindset that we've become accustomed to in the Google studies. Something like almost 40% of young people. When they're looking for a place for lunch, for example, they don't go to Google maps. They don't go to search. They go to TikTok or Instagram. What's up with that?

Sally: Well, it's, it's very telling of our younger generation coming up and that they are looking for a more visually rich experience. It seems as though they're looking for influencers, people that they admire, that they like seeing on social media to give their opinions about things. TikTok, now has 24% of their global audience are women 18 to 24 years old. And then under that is 18% of men that are 18 to 24 years old. And so this is definitely the direction. It seems like that our younger generation is going. I mean, I remember the days of when, you know, we would look up, Ask Jeeves on the internet to like to find the answer to something, but it's a whole different experience now doing research.

Phil: And now I think what's so interesting to me is a lot of the junk food brands are encouraging TikTok users to market their products for them. You know, that just came out from BGM global health and new study was published there. And the health experts are saying that given the video hosting service popularity with kids, especially the policies are needed to protect them. The researchers found that unhealthy food and drink brands are encouraging TikTok users to market these products actively turning them into brand ambassadors, as well as using their own accounts for promotional activity. The bad news to your point, more than a third of TikTok daily users in the US are 14 years and younger.

Sally: Wow. That is a younger audience. And I know we've heard things about energy drinks and junk food and alcohol and those being the, the big ads that are getting in front of these young people. So we'll see what sort of, what sort of steps these companies take to curb that.