Comments Are So Important, At Least in How Gen Z Retrieves and Processes Information

"If facty-sounding stuff does manage to sneak into Gen Z's feeds — claims about what ... Trump would do as president ... they're likely to head straight for the comments. That's partly because they know the digital hoi polloi will quickly unmask any fake news." - MSN, June 2024

This finding is from recent research conducted by Google's Jigsaw in how Gen Z obtains and absorbs information. It and other takeaways surprised those conducting the study which was done through intensive interivews, not quantitative measuring. So, those seeking to persuade and/or sell to Gen Z should approach comments as key data. That is analogous to employers' paying attention to what is posted on professional anonymous networks such as Blind, Glassdoor, Reddit and Fishbowl.

Other discoveries from the Jigsaw research about this generation include:

• Extraordinary influence of the Influencers
• A turnaway from any content seeming targeted for clickbait, behind a paywall, laden with advertising or seeking donations or subscriptions
• Rejection of long articles
• Assumption that most news is created by algorithms, so is programmed to be slanted
• Willingness to do traditional fact-based research for serious decisions such as investing or higher education. 

Rather than imposing negative judgments on this shift in the retrieval and processing of information, there should be a hard-core acceptance that everything from the media to the marketing games should be in flux. Those include political promotion. 

It can also extend to the supposedly tradition-bound field - the legal sector. How prominent law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis, Paul, Weiss and Cravath recruit, promote, operate the business, present cases in court and communicate in social media could also be in for dramatic change. Should more resources, for example, be pumped into commenting on digital platforms, as well as monitoring those comments. A sign of such a shift taking place is that the Paul, Weiss AI podcast (of course, a complex subject) espisodes are short, non-pontificating, not formatted for clickbait and conversational. 

Maybe the Big Kahuna issue: Is SEO over for those trying to reach Gen Z?

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