Maybe Those Post Brexit Google Searches Weren’t What You Think

The media has been hyping up these post-Brexit Google searches as evidence the Brits voted for something they didn’t understand, but, let me offer a possible alternate explanation. (I admit I have no idea, but, this is plausible so bear with me).

We know from the polls that younger people were more likely to support remaining as opposed to leaving. It’s also a reasonable assumption that, the younger you are, the more likely you are to use Google to search for information.

I want to add to that the anecdotal evidence that younger people tend to get most of their news/views from social media, and the pseudo-intellectual elite that dominate these platforms. I base that on the fact that I have many discussions with young people who mostly echo the same things I have read on social media, and I frequently make arguments to which they say “interesting, I’ve never thought about it that way.” Entirely anecdotal I know but, I admit that I don’t have any hard data on how well young people see both sides of an issue. One thing I do have, is data that shows early social news and commentary ratings(even if random) have a major impact on their downstream ratings. This could be used to argue that younger people (who are heavier social news users) are more likely influenced by ratings of other social users than by the power of the underlying argument.

So, I want to put forth the following plausible theory. Young people voted to remain primarily because the British elite and social media mavens pushed that view. Once the results were in, these young people were shocked they were not part of the winning vote, and so, they began to wonder if they really understood the issue. Thus, they started Googling about the EU.

Note how the media quickly assumed it was all the “leave” voters who were doing the Googling. Couldn’t it just as easily have been the “remain” votes who thought their cause was a slam dunk and, when it wasn’t, started to wonder if they misunderstood what was happening?

And also, the fact education and age still inversely correlate, because people who are in their 50s and 60s today didn’t need more than a high school education to build a successful career, means that it may be tough to make the “only the dumb voted to leave” argument. I’m sure there are many older people with few of the credentials so valued by the intellectual elite of today who are actually very bright, but didn’t need to go to college 40 years ago to be successful.

This argument could be entirely wrong. My only point here is to show a very plausible secondary interpretation of the data we are seeing.