With new COVID restrictions, I had to Google for “cool outdoor places in Singapore” and its various permutations so that there were activities that did not require me to live under the scrutiny of temperature taking machines and SafeEntry. I have also noticed that the rest of Singapore had similar ideas, and usually empty nature parks would be bustling with people and carpark lots all filled with cars. That got me thinking that surely, a lot more people must be Googling “cool outdoor places in Singapore” and its various permutations, and perhaps the corresponding rise in online shopping for exercise clothes. At some point in time some historian might look through the data archives of Google and try to explain the sudden interest in health and exercise. So I began to wonder, why not do that now, and try to explore what life is like through a Google Search?
Let us first look at the 2020 report, which was a lot more detailed than previous years and has some pretty interesting observations from the 2020 all time high search:
- How to cut your hair
- What day is it (peaked in April 2020)
- How to learn coding (Python was the most popular programming language)
Cabin fever is clearly taking its toll on people in the year of 2020 and bored humans are trying to find ways to make their time productive. The great thing about sifting through the Google search trends is that in various reports you can probably steal some interesting hobbies or activity ideas from what other people are searching once your temperamental flights of interests have exhausted your own list of ways to occupy your time. Go explore how the rest of the world are living through in their Google searches.
Below is also a list of rather interesting How-Tos that people have been searching for in 2020. It’s pretty telling to see technology How-Tos trending because the year of quarantine forced all of us onto virtual meetings and we are not all the best adapted at it (I for one am guilty of searching for changing zoom background). I am also guilty of searching for how to make the dalgona coffee but I gave up halfway trying to whip the coffee into the fluffy foam.
- How to wear a surgical face mask
- How to make hand sanitizer
- How to change Zoom background
- How to make dalgona coffee
- How to make bubble tea
- How to vote in Singapore
- How to get free Robux
- How to use Google Meet
- How to screenshot on Windows
- How to delete Instagram account
In the following table you could also see the comparison of some trending global searches and Singapore news across 5 years. Again, the 2020 trend towards technology as a response to COVID was not unexpected, but this trawled up a lot of past fads that I have forgotten about. PokemonGo was such a big thing that I feel has died down a lot (perhaps the COVID situation limits going out to hunt for pokemon anyways). People used to religiously follow new Iphone releases. People used to care a lot more about individual people too, from 2016 to 2019 there’s always individuals being namedropped whereas 2020 was clearly dominated more by the circumstances of the time.
While compiling, there is also a sudden shocking list that I did not expect to see appearing in the 2017 year of searches. For Top Trending Destinations:
- Things to do in Penang
- Things to do in Batam
- Things to do in Seoul
- Things to do in Krabi
- Things to do in Phuket
- Things to do in Tokyo
- Things to do in Melbourne
- Things to do in London
- Things to do in Malacca
- Things to do in Taipei
When will travelling be a thing again? Perhaps in place of all these overseas destinations I am sure the COVID year will yield much more local explorations (explaining the boon in visitors to nature parks) and re-discovering Singapore. To me this seemed like a good reminder to look at what is familiar to us with new eyes before trying to go overseas and find new sights and sounds. Perhaps what makes a good trip is our ability to observe beauty rather than the actual view themselves. My mum, for example, always takes long walks to all distances and she is able to point out the signs of a changing season: the tree that has never flowered before has yellow flowers now, the leaves are falling a lot more, there are new bird species appearing… These are intimate things we can rediscover around us and will only be noticeable with enough time and observation.
To cap it all off, I thought I would search for the most popular searched slang words through these years. Back in 2016 was when Instagram first changed their brown logo to the current pink one, and it was an era that did not have tiktok and micro-content. 2021 saw the rise of many new words for the first time in a while, perhaps because the quarantine lifestyle has fundamentally changed the way we consume material and communicate about them.
Life through a Google search was a little nostalgic and oddly insightful about the developments of our lifestyle, media consumption, and important events. Our digital footprints left its own chronicle behind, and there are many other unsuspecting mediums that document our day to day. Maybe we can all find some forgotten trends in this age of overwhelming information and new things that demand our attention.
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