Watching TV to Learn (YouTube and Research)

Sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it? It did to my mom, when I was a student. But that may be changing: In an recent New York Times article, Miguel Helft described how YouTube has evolved from a video hosting and sharing site to become the second most popular search tool on the Internet. The second? That astounded me. Yes, it recently passed Yahoo (explains why their stock is dropping like a rock, huh?) to move into second place, behind parent company Google. The journalist describes how 9-year-old Tyler Kennedy turns first to YouTube for school research. But why?

I guess the easiest way to explain it is this; think back to grade school… Remember when you’d sit in class, and the teacher would say that during you’d be watching a video that day? Remember how watching a video was somehow more exciting than normal lessons? For some reason, seeing someone demonstrating something on-screen was far more gripping than watching your teacher do it, although I have never been quite sure why (I’ll expound on that a little later in this entry). Whatever the reason, it’s also true for adults, particularly when it comes to subjects people consider complicated. But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

In the first half of the 20th Century, folks grew up reading books and newspapers. Then there was a generation that grew up on movies, and then television (and later, cable/satellite). The most recent shift was to the Internet. Now, online video is creating yet another generation in the 21st.

At first, this made me kind of upset. First, because I didn’t have the luxury of Google when I was in school—I had to dig through the annoying Dewey Decimal System, be tied to a desk in a library, and go through a lot of fruitless searches before I found what I needed. Today’s students can easily Google for some information, or text search some digitized documents, which is much easier, and time-effective, and I probably would’ve gotten much better grades if I had that kind of tool at my disposal (people naturally want others to have to ‘earn’ their stripes, in whatever their achievements may be, be it educationally or professionally). Now, instead of documents, are kids these days (blurgh – that makes me sound like one of the “olds”), getting so lazy that they won’t even be inconvenienced to read text on the interwebs anymore? Not necessarily— perhaps it’s just more efficient. Why?

• Video incorporates sound and visuals, as well as text
• It’s short, due to the nature of the technology
• Interactive technology allows tagging and commenting to drive you to more information, text or otherwise

I’ve always said that I wished the Discovery Channel and the History Channel were available when I was younger. For some reason, I can absorb and analyze and regurgitate facts more easily when gleaned from a 1-hour documentary than a 300-page textbook. YouTube does that in bite-size portions, due to length limits imposed (though that might change soon). It allows a viewer to pause for reflection, and rewind for review. And it’s not just for 9-year-olds like little Tyler. Have you ever explained how to do something techy to your Boomer parents or grandparents? Showing them over and over and over again? I used to have to explain how to use the VCR to my mother over the phone. It was impossible. If my mom could use Firefox, at least I could send her a link to demo something visually. Guess I could send it to my father.

Does that mean that text is going to go away? Of course not. The increasing popularity of video doesn’t (necessarily) mean deterioration in the consumption of text and its related formats. It does, however, signal a trend (and you know how us PR people and journos luuurve trends): people are now turning to video not just for entertainment but also for reference.

The main reason that text rules the interwebs today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via hyperlinks is what makes the whole thing possible. Hyperlinking video is a bit harder. Not impossible (you can link objects and insert text in videos), but a slightly impractical thus far. It's just not as astrophysicists would call an “elegant solution”. Also, YouTube doesn’t have a great search engine in the first place. But guess who’s YouTube’s Daddy? That’s right: Google. It'll get there...

So there is, and will be a shift. Because video was not practical before, to create or consume, the web was dominated by text. With higher-speed connections and more powerful computers, images began to flourish on websites. Now that video cameras and broadband are widespread, information that is better served by video is getting more action. And because kids like Tyler were born into video, this is just the beginning.

A Postscript:
Interestingly enough, this NYTimes piece helps to justify my previous blog entry – The father of the kid that is profiled in the article writes in his own blog:

“I was contacted by the reporter, who had seen a post on ReadWriteWeb about Tyler’s use of YouTube and wanted to bring the story to the New York Times’ readers.”

Another example of online journalism being picked up by the MSM! To paraphrase what Sean Connery said so eloquently in The Untouchables, “Thus endeth the lesson.”