Not-so-savvy searchers

Net users are very happy with their search engines and are usually very loyal to a particular one but pretty naive about how it works. That's the basic take-away from a survey about search engine use by the Pew Internet and American Life project. You know all those "sponsored links" sometimes in a box at the top and/or side of your search results, sometimes filling the whole first screen and usually marked as such in very light grey? That companies pay to have them appear there? No? Well, you're not alone. And your kids are even less likely to know that - when doing research for school - using these paid search "results" is like using magazine ads as source material. Pew found that "only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or 'sponsored' results and unpaid results. And only one in six say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not." Just another sign of how much we need media literacy education in the Internet age. Check out the answer to "Why teach media literacy to young children?" in the California Museum of Photography's site (part of the University of California, Riverside). The findings were widely covered, e.g., in the BBC, the Detroit Free Press, the San Jose Mercury News, and USATODAY.