40% of Gen Z use TikTok and Instagram instead of Google for search
Misquoted Confidence: medium
Primary source found, but the way it is quoted changes the subject, metric, population or precision.
- Commonly cited as
- "40% of young people use TikTok as their search engine" (Google)
- True origin
- Google (remark by SVP Prabhakar Raghavan, reported by TechCrunch) — Fortune Brainstorm Tech remarks (July 12, 2022)
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2022
- Data as of
- Remark made July 2022; underlying data unpublished
- Last checked
- What the source says
In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search ... They go to TikTok or Instagram.
- Method & sample
- Unpublished internal Google survey of U.S. users aged 18–24 (per Google's statement to TechCrunch).
- Drift between quote and source
- Scope: 'looking for a place for lunch', not all searches
- Population: U.S. 18–24, not 'Gen Z' globally
- Source: an executive's spoken estimate ('something like almost 40%') about unpublished data
- Interest
- Google made the remark amid antitrust scrutiny, where showing competition helps it.
Safe rephrasing
A Google executive said in 2022 that internal research found almost 40% of U.S. 18–24-year-olds looking for a lunch spot went to TikTok or Instagram rather than Google Maps or Search.
Sources we opened
Machine-readable: /api/claims/40-percent-gen-z-use-tiktok-instead-of-google.json · Last checked 2026-10-16