Stranger Things took this summer by storm. According to statistics, the fourth season broke an all-time record as viewers watched it for 287 million hours in the week of 23 -29 May. Besides this, kids also explored new games, memes and bloggers. Kaspersky analysed anonymised data provided by users of parental control software Kaspersky Safe Kids from 1st June to 22nd August 2022. The data included search queries on Google and YouTube.
Hey, Google! What were kids looking for?
The most popular meme of the summer which was googled by kids appeared to be Big Floppa – one-fifth of all Memes requests (20%) were for him.
During this summer, 33% of kids’ google searches were YouTube-related, while various Internet services amounted to 18%. Interestingly, this summer kids were more into the creative social network site ‘DeviantArt‘ (6%) than they were into TikTok (5%). ‘DeviantArt‘ is the largest online community for artists or art enthusiasts, and allows people to connect through the creation and sharing of art.
Apart from that, gaming was one of the most popular categories – its share was 10%. In particular, Roblox became the leader with 33%, which is very far ahead of Minecraft (9%), despite its huge popularity among children. Another frequent search request this summer was Nintendo’s recently released “Pokemon Scarlet and Violet”, which obtained 5% of searches.
What did kids search for on YouTube?
Stranger Things
Among all the requests for ‘Cartoons, Movies and TV Shows’ (16% of all YouTube queries), there was a huge interest in the fourth season of Stranger Things. Children searched for not only videos related to the series, but also the actors and characters who played the main roles. This time, the most famous actresses were Millie Bobby Brown and Sadie Sink.
The popularity of Stranger Things also migrated to the music arena (music requests on YouTube amount to 16%). The most frequently searched videos that kids were looking for were “Chrissy, Wake Up” – a video created from clips and pictures from Season four, as well as Kate Bush’s track, Running Up That Hill (1985) that one of the main characters enjoyed listening to.
Pink Sauce
The ‘Pink Sauce’ meme became an interesting phenomenon. It appeared on TikTok and was created by blogger Chef.pii, who released a pink sauce for food. There were some scandals around the product, and both the quantity of sauce in the package and the quality of the product itself was actively discussed.
Summer bloggers
In addition to memes, children were most interested in games across YouTube this summer – this category accounts for the largest number of requests – 27%. The most searched were game bloggers (35%) and bloggers specializing in Minecraft (27%).
Influencers who film various types of content like challenges or lifestyle got 20% of all children’s queries. The most popular blogger of the summer was Spencer X, who shoots music-related content. He has 2.66 million subscribers on YouTube and 55.1 million on TikTok
‘We regularly see children’s interests and trends change quickly. Literally every quarter there are new memes, movies and heroes appearing. For example, the creepy game The Backrooms was insanely popular this spring, and now “Pokemon Scarlet and Violet” is already at the top of the list. Keeping track of all the changes can be quite difficult if you are not a child, so parental control apps can help parents understand all the trends and topics,’ comments Anna Larkina, web content analysis expert at Kaspersky.
The full report about kids’ online interests is available via this link.
Here are some tips for keeping your kids safe online:
- Don’t neglect to show interest in your kids’ online activity. Ask them if you can watch their favourite series or listen to music tracks together. As an option, you can learn together some secure practices to stay safe online.
- A good option can be parental control apps. But it’s important to discuss this topic with your child to explain how these apps work and why they’re needed to stay safe online.
- Explain that sensitive information should only be shared via messengers and only with people they know in real life. You can be a role model and show them good examples of good behaviour.
- Spend more time communicating with your kids about online safety measures. Try paying attention to your own habits. Do you use your smartphone while eating or talking? Are your kids mimicking any of your habits or behaviour patterns? Do they react in a different way when you put your phone away?
- Make talks about cybersecurity more enjoyable and interesting by discussing them with your child through games and other entertaining formats.
