What Are You Afraid Of? and Other Telling Questions

Figuring out how to do something via our computers is becoming an increasingly popular activity. "How to" queries are on the rise. Since the beginning of 2007, they have risen more than 17.5 percent. Here are the top ten "How to" searches in the United States for the four weeks ending December 21, 2007:

1. How to tie a tie
2. How to have sex
3. How to kiss
4. How to lose weight
5. How to write a resume
6. How to levitate
7. How to draw
8. How to get pregnant
9. How to make out
10. How to make a video

When you look at these terms, one thing that becomes very clear, beyond teen sexual angst, is just how, like our fears, our instructional dilemmas have become fractionalized. To make sense of the vast list of more than 130,000 different searches, I grouped the top one thousand "how to" searches into categories.

The most prevalent type of "how to" queries are those general knowledge questions that seek how to accomplish a specific task, which include our number one, "how to tie a tie," as well as "how to make a movie," "how to solve Rubik's cube," and so on. "How to draw" figures prominently in this class of queries, with specific interest in drawing Japanese anime characters being the most popular. Combined, general knowledge questions accounted for more than 57 percent of the top one thousand queries.

The next most common how-to's were of a sexual nature. Given the graphic nature of this set, I'll leave the list to your imagination. There were 173 of these queries out of our total of 1,000, or 17.3 percent.

"How to" searches also reveal our aspirations. Comprising 12 percent of the instructional searches were those questions geared toward self-improvement: how to "lose weight," "gain weight," "make money," and, for those truly in search of instant gratification, "make money fast." On the darker side, more than 9.5 percent of the searches were for illicit or illegal activities, with marijuana use figuring high on the list (how to "grow marijuana," "grow pot," "grow weed"), but also some very concerning questions: "how to commit suicide," "how to make meth," even "how to make a bomb." We apparently feel comfortable enough with our computers and the Internet to query just about anything. By the way, "how to write a book" is in position number sixty-two.

Copyright © 2008 by Bill Tancer. All rights reserved.