Kids on the Web in 2021: Infinite creativity

For over a year we’ve been living in a world gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has the pandemic affected people’s lifestyles, it has also accelerated the development and implementation of technologies that make it easier for us to complete everyday and work-related tasks. We no longer need to fly halfway around the world to attend a conference. Nor do we need to leave the house to buy things like food or household cleaning products. Children can now attend school remotely, and more and more adults are getting used to working from home. We do not know how much longer we will be living like this or what life will look like after the pandemic. But one thing is clear: no matter what happens, people are unlikely to give up existing technologies.

Children master new technologies and are adapting to the digital society faster than adults. In fact, they are the digital society. In this report we try to understand what occupied the younger generation during the last year, from May 2020 to April 2021 inclusive. We will see what children were engrossed in during their leisure time when they were fixated on their smartphones, how and where they tapped into their creativity, what they were listening to and who their favorite YouTube blogger was. At the same time, we will try to remember what we were like at their age and understand that in essence, they are passionate about the same things we were, only in a new, digital form.

How we collect our statistics

Website categorization

Kaspersky Safe Kids module included into our solutions for home users scans the contents of web pages that children try to visit. If the site falls into one of 14 undesirable categories, the product sends an alert to Kaspersky Security Network. In doing so, no personal data is transmitted and user privacy is not violated. Note:

• It is up to the parent to decide which content to block by tweaking the protective solution’s preferences. However, anonymous statistics are collected for all the 14 categories.
• The information in this report was obtained from computers running Windows and macOS.

Web filtering in Kaspersky Safe Kids currently covers the following categories:

• Software, audio, video
• Internet communication
• Videogames
• Online stores, banks, payment systems
• News media
• Job search
• Adult content
• Profanity, obscenity
• Weapons, explosives, pyrotechnics
• Religions, religious associations
• Gambling, lotteries, sweepstakes
• Alcohol, tobacco, narcotics
• Anonymizers
• Violence

Search query filtering

Looking at children’s search activity is the best way to see what they are interested in. Kaspersky Safe Kids can filter kids’ queries in five search engines (Bing, Google, Mail.ru, Yahoo!, Yandex), as well as on YouTube. Filtering targets six potentially dangerous topics: Adult content, Alcohol, Narcotics, Tobacco, Racism and Profanity.

This report presents statistics on YouTube searches. The TOP 1,000 search queries collected from YouTube over the period from November 2020 to April 2021, inclusive, was taken as 100%. The ranking was based on the number of times a query was input, without breakdown by region or language. The popularity of a topic is determined by its share of related queries.

We divided the search queries collected from November 2020 to April 2021 into the following subject categories:

• Games
• YouTube bloggers
• Music
• Movies, cartoons and TV shows
• Trends
• Gacha Life
• Hobbies and creation
• Memes
• Anime
• TikTok
• Sports
• Toys
• Adult content
• Educational content
• Miscellaneous

Control the use of programs

Kaspersky Safe Kids allows parents to control and limit the amount of time their children spend on apps and programs on their devices. This study draws on anonymized data on the number of hours children spent on apps on devices running the Android operating system in different regions and countries, as well as in the world as a whole.

We determined the 10 most popular apps for each of the regions and countries we examined, as well as for the entire world. For each set of 10, we took as 100% the sum of the hours spent on these apps. The percentage breakdown in the TOP 10 reflects the number of hours spent on each app.

Picture of the world

Website categories

In the last few years, the share of the category “Software, audio, video” has been increasing steadily. Last year it was nearly 40%, while this year it grew more than four percentage points, to 44.38%. Furthermore, despite the pandemic and the fact that children around the world were attending school remotely, the share of the category “Internet communication” continued to fall, from 24.16% last year to 22.08% this year. Notably, the share of alerts for “Videogames” also fell by more than two percentage points, to 13.67%. The share for “Online-stores, banks, payment systems” category rose by two percentage points, to 13.46%. This is not surprising: amid the pandemic, where new restrictions are continually being introduced, online shopping is becoming an integral part of life, and in many countries it is actively growing.

Android apps

To get a fuller picture of children’s interests, it is useful to look at the 10 mobile apps on which children across the world spent most of their time during the period covered by this study. YouTube was the decisive leader, with 32.17%. This again confirms that YouTube was the most sought-after service among children. WhatsApp, a messaging service, was number two with 18.07%, and was followed by TikTok, the world’s most popular social network, with 14.96%.

Four games made it into the list of 10 most popular apps among children: Brawl Stars, Roblox, Among Us and Minecraft.

YouTube search queries

As the data by website category shows, the most visited category was “Software, audio, video”, and this includes YouTube, the most popular website among children across the world. YouTube was also the most popular mobile app. To delve more deeply into children’s interests, it is useful to examine what they are searching for on YouTube.

Children around the world were most interested in video games: they were the subject of 34.71% of the search queries we examined. The second largest category, representing 18.16% of queries, was bloggers’ work, which includes everything from lifestyle to music videos. Children listen to music very actively on YouTube, and 17.35% of queries were for artists, genres and songs. In addition, more and more official channels are cropping up on YouTube, where viewers can watch cartoons and TV series and shows legally and for free; 7.52% of children’s queries were for this content. Current trends, such as “pop it and simple dimple” and “ASMR,” were the subject of 4.43% of search queries.

As we analyzed the most popular search queries by children around the world, we noted a large number of searches on the video game maker Gacha Life. We separated these queries into a standalone topic.

In addition to pure entertainment, children were searching for videos on YouTube that inspired them to be creative. Queries related to making things with their hands, drawing, dances and other creative endeavors represented 2.69% of searches. This was even higher than the share of memes, which typically interest children, and which were the subject of 2% of searches between November 2020 and April 2021.

Software, audio, video

We will now look more closely at the most popular category of websites, “Software, audio, video”.

We tracked the popularity of this category over the course of the year so we could see in which months children spent the most time watching videos and listening to music. As the chart shows, the peak occurred during the summer months, when most children in the world are on vacation. In addition, as the middle of the school year approached, children visited websites with video and audio content less often. In April 2021, the share of alerts for this category was already slightly higher than the August 2020 indicator of 46.10%. This result should not yet be considered an anomaly: these figures could be explained by an annual increase in alerts for this category.

The data by region shows that the most frequent visitors to video platforms were children in South Asia, with 53.19%. The share of alerts for this category in this region was more than 10 percentage points higher than for the CIS, which stood at 41.09% and where children watched videos least often from a PC. Africa and the Arab world were second and third, with 51.28% and 48.13% respectively. Children in Oceania and Europe accessed video platforms from computers less often.

The country-by-country breakdown of popularity of Software, Audio, Video websites shows that the largest source of visitors to these resources in South Asia was India, with 54.91%, nearly three percentage points more than the next largest contributor. Next were Saudi Arabia and South Africa, with 52.09% and 51.87% respectively. Closing out the ranking of countries where children preferred to spend time watching videos on PCs were the Russian Federation (41.08%), Kazakhstan (40.14%) and Great Britain (40.12%).

We already know that the most popular website and app in the “Software, audio, video” category is YouTube. At the same time, nowadays mobile phones are used much more often than PCs, so to get a complete picture we must consider the statistics for mobile apps. We studied how much time children in different regions and countries spent on the YouTube, YouTube Kids and Netflix apps.

Children in the Arab world and North America spent more time watching videos on the YouTube mobile app than children in Europe and the CIS.

Out of the 10 most popular apps among children in each of the countries presented, children from Kenya spent the most time on YouTube, 51.27%. Kenya led in this category by more than 10 percentage points. Spanish children spent comparatively little time (22.19%) watching videos on YouTube as a proportion of the time they spent on the 10 most popular apps in the country. We will see below how they preferred to spend their time. India, where children visit video platforms from PCs more often than children in other countries, came in fourth in terms of time spent on the YouTube mobile app, with 37.34%.

In addition to the basic YouTube app, there is a special children’s app, YouTube Kids, but it did not make the list of TOP 10 Android apps on which children spent the most time in all the countries.

Kenyan children also led the other countries on this indicator, with 10.64%, but by a smaller margin than with regard to time spent on the YouTube app. Australia trailed Kenya by less than one percentage point, with 9.94%. Children in Italy were not large consumers of YouTube Kids: they spent just 2.11% of their time on it, compared to 28.62% on YouTube.

Netflix is a rather popular platform among children and adolescents. Recently, the number of TV series for adolescents, cartoons and other content popular among children on similar platforms has been rising, and not only in English. For example, Netflix now streams numerous Korean doramas and Japanese animes, which children and adolescents adore. Nevertheless, Netflix did not make the TOP 10 apps in terms of time spent in all countries. In Spain, where children did not spend much time on YouTube, Netflix was in the TOP 10 with 3.37%, while in South Africa, children watched TV series and movies on Netflix more often than children in other countries, devoting 6.06% of their time to the platform.

What exactly are children watching and listening to on YouTube? In addition to videos on computer games and other topics we will examine below, the most popular categories of search queries were “Music” and “Movies, cartoons and TV shows.”

In terms of music, children very often searched for the K-pop groups Blackpink and BTS, and the American stars Ariana Grande, Travis Scott and Billie Eilish. Children were also interested in specific music genres. For example, based on the number of searches, phonk was rather popular. Children were not just listening to music — they were also trying to make it. The names of different beats and samples, and lessons on creating music in specialized programs, began showing up more often among the popular search queries in all languages. It is important to note that the social network TikTok has an outsized influence on children’s musical preferences as well as on the industry as a whole, so a track that is lucky enough to go viral on TikTok becomes a hit. This is what happened with “SugarCrash!” by ElyOtto, “Astronaut in the Ocean” by Masked Wolf and even “Rasputin” by Boney M., which got a second life thanks to the game Just Dance as well as to a TikTok challenge that went viral and propelled this track to the ranks of the “popular.”

Half (50.21%) of all searches for “Movies, cartoons and TV shows” were for cartoons. Children were most interested in cartoons such as “Ladybug and Cat Noir,” “Gravity Falls,” “PAW Patrol,” “Hazbin Hotel,” and “Peppa Pig.” Various TV shows were in second place in terms of search popularity, with 41.16%. We found that children started to become more interested in television production over the reporting period. In English they searched for “the voice kids”; in German they searched for “hilf mir,” “krass schule” and “berlin tag und nacht”; and in Russian they searched for “шоу маска,” “пацанки,” “голос дети,” and “колледж стс.” Children also searched for videos, most likely trailers, for the upcoming film “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the recently released “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and the miniseries “WandaVision,” which was released between January and March 2021 on Disney+. Searches for TV series on Netflix also made the list of 1,000 most popular searches by children. Children searched for “Cobra Kai” and the cult series “Stranger Things.”

Internet Communication Media

As was typical, the “Internet communication” category of websites was second in terms of number of visits from PCs, with 22.08%.

This category gained in popularity as the school year began, while visits to these types of websites fell as vacation periods approached. This trend may be explained by the fact that during the pandemic, many schools switched to remote learning, which entailed the use of programs and messaging services that support multiuser webcasts, such as Zoom.

Over the last year, children in the CIS most often visited the websites of social networks, web versions of messaging services and conferencing services: 28.39% of the total number of Kaspersky Safe Kids alerts for all categories. Children in Europe visited these websites least often, with 12.43%.

Children in Egypt (34.97%), Russia (28.45%) and Mexico (25.04%) most often communicated on social networks from PCs. Children in France (12.40%), Great Britain (12.03%) and Germany (7.80%) were the bottom three countries in this ranking.

We had always predicted that online communication was shifting increasingly from PCs to mobile platforms. Most social networks are much more convenient to use on mobile devices. Moreover, the new platforms appearing and being developed in the last few years are sometimes designed exclusively for mobile devices. One example is the ultrapopular social network TikTok, which does have a web version, but it has limited options. In addition, a convenient platform for communication is messaging apps, which are also used more frequently on phones.

We can now back up our hypotheses with numbers, having analyzed which social networks and messaging apps were among the 10 most popular Android apps in terms of the amount of time children spent on them.

The most popular means of communication among children all over the world was WhatsApp, at 18.07%, and it was the second most popular app downloaded on children’s Android devices in the world.

Children living in Africa (25.10%) and South Asia (23.59%) spent slightly more time on WhatsApp than children in Europe (20.48%), East Asia (20.33%) and Latin America (20.16%). Children in the Arab world spent the least amount of time on WhatsApp (11.04%), along with children from North America and Oceania, where the app did not even make the TOP 10.

Italian children communicated on WhatsApp much more often than children in other countries: 30.82%. Germany took third place, with 24.30%, even though it was last in the ranking of frequency of visits to websites in the category “Internet communication”. Children in Great Britain also did not often visit the web versions of social networks, and of the 10 most popular apps, they spent nearly 16% of their time communicating on WhatsApp.

In some regions and countries, Zoom — for which demand soared amid the pandemic — made the list of TOP 10 apps. The share of this app compared to other apps children gravitated to was not very high, but it should be noted that children actively used it in South Asia (6%), the Arab world (3.84%) and East Asia (3.48%).

Children in the United Arab Emirates and India were the most active Zoom users, with 8.40% and 5.96% respectively. Kenya came in last in the ranking of countries where this app was popular, with 2.34%. It should be noted that in the majority of the countries analyzed, it was not among the 10 most popular apps.

Another well-known messaging app, Viber, was among the 10 most used apps in only two countries: Belarus (18.90%) and the Russian Federation (4.74%).

TikTok is currently the most popular social network. Of the 10 mobile social networks most used by children across the world, TikTok topped the list with 14.96%, far outpacing Instagram, which was second with 4.86%.

European children spent the most time on TikTok of all children in the world: 15.96% of the total time spent on the 10 most popular apps. They were followed by Oceania (15.28%), Latin America (14.92%) and the CIS (14.06%). Children from the Arab countries spent the least amount of time on TikTok, while the app did not even make the TOP 10 apps in South Asia.

Of all the countries analyzed, children in Spain spent the most time on TikTok: 18.94%. In contrast, children in Egypt (5.43%), Saudi Arabia (3.78%) and Kenya (2.52%) devoted the least number of hours to this app.

Children’s fascination with TikTok should not be viewed as unequivocally harmful. To record a video that will trend and become popular, users need to, at a minimum, learn a dance move or write a script, and to produce an idea they need to compose the shot, set up lighting, select a perspective and choose musical accompaniment. As a result, the child is acting as the cameraperson, actor, director, costume designer and an entire film crew. It goes without saying that this helps build skills that may not just be useful in the future but could also become a profession.

As for the content that children consume on TikTok, it becomes more varied by the day as the social network attracts more and more content producers. We recently wrote about how TikTok can be used as an educational resource. This is only one part of what you can find there. TikTok more or less has something for everyone — from dances to tips on bedding seeds at your summer cottage to digital art.

Lately Instagram, which until recently was wildly popular, has been losing popularity among children and is being sidelined. Children spent an average of one-third less time on Instagram than on TikTok.

In North America (7.27%), Oceania (7.2%) and East Asia (6.77%), children spent slightly more time on Instagram than their counterparts in other regions. The lowest proportion was in Africa (3.61%) and the CIS, where the app did not even make the list of the 10 most popular apps.

Children in Spain, who spent the most time on TikTok, also spent the most time on Instagram, with 9.05%. Instagram was nearly equally popular among children in Canada (8.98%). Children in Germany (3.32%), Kazakhstan (3.32%) and Kenya (2.4%) spent comparatively little time scrolling through Instagram feeds and stories.

We cannot neglect another social network whose functionality is reminiscent of Instagram and, to a lesser extent, TikTok. This is the progenitor of the animal filters: SnapChat. SnapChat made the list of 10 most popular Android apps in only a few countries.

In countries where SnapChat was one of the most popular apps, French children spent the most time on it, with 12.24%, while German children spent the least time on it, with 2.43%.

Facebook is far from the favorite social network among children. Nevertheless, Facebook enjoys some popularity among children in Egypt (10.08%), Mexico (5.9%) and India (2.87%). Facebook did not make the list of the 10 most popular apps in terms of time in the other countries.

This was also the case for the Russian social network VKontakte, which was once very popular among children. It made the TOP 10 only in the Russian Federation, with 5.32%, a small proportion compared to TikTok’s 14.03%.

Videogames

The third most popular category of websites visited was “Videogames”. On average, during the year its share was 13.67% of all websites visited from PCs in the categories analyzed. However, the category should not be judged solely on the data for visited websites related to games because video games long ago migrated beyond the borders of personal computers and took their place on children’s mobile phones. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at the countries where children most frequently visited game websites from computers.

Children in Kazakhstan most frequently visited websites dedicated to computer games, with 26.01%. Children in Great Britain were second, with 19.40%. It should be noted that last year, Great Britain was first in the Computer Games category, with 23.94%. Children in India hardly visited websites for computer games for PCs (5.08%).

To understand which games children are most interested in, we must look at the searches they performed on YouTube, where, as we note above, games were their top interest, accounting for 34.71% of search queries.

Most often, and in all languages, children searched for names of bloggers or names of channels that publish content related to video games. This is usually the let’s play format, life hacks, funny episodes and overviews of, for example, the new Brawl Stars characters. Of all the search queries for game-related topics we analyzed, 44.44% were for this kind of content. Based on children’s search queries, the most popular English-language game channels publishing videos on different games were MrBeast Gaming, the unchanged PewDiePi and Aphmau. German-speaking children were most interested in Paluten, Standart Skill and iCrimax. Russian-speaking children gravitated to EdisonPts, Pozzi, FixEye and EugenBro.

Children were most interested in Minecraft (22.84%); Fortnite (6.73%), which was nominated for Favorite Video Game in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards in 2021; Among Us, which won that award (3.80%); Brawl Stars, which recently captured children’s attention (6.34%); and Roblox, a very popular game and longtime favorite (3.82%).

All these games also have mobile versions, and some of them were among the 10 most popular apps in many countries. Roblox was the game that most often made the TOP 10.

Children in Great Britain (11.72%) and Australia (11.01%) spent the most time on the Roblox app. Children in Belarus (4.31%) and Italy (2.65%) spent the least time on Roblox; their preference was Brawl Stars. Belarusian children devoted 10.61% of the total time spent on the 10 most popular apps to Brawl Stars; this figure was 7.59% for children in Italy.

Children in Russia spent the most time playing Brawl Stars (11.14%). Brazilian children preferred Roblox (7.63%) to Brawl Stars (3.59%).

We cannot ignore the game Among Us, which hooked children over the world in 2020–2021. The game is a reimagined analog of the well-known game Mafia. The only difference is that it can be played without leaving the house, and in a world where a pandemic is raging, this is more convenient than ever.

Children in Australia spent the most time playing Among Us on Android devices (5.76%), followed by children in the UAE (5.57%). Although Kenya came in last, with 2.30%, it should be noted that this was the only game that appeared among the 10 most popular apps in the country.

Children did not seem to enjoy playing Minecraft on mobile devices. This game made the TOP 10 apps in only three countries: UAE (2.51%), South Africa (2.23%) and Belarus (4.19%). However, it would be a mistake to think that Minecraft is losing popularity. Based on YouTube search queries, it is still the number one game for children in the world. Since it is present on nearly all devices, including game consoles — among them Nintendo Switch, which is popular with children — children are most likely choosing to play Minecraft on consoles and PCs.

Gacha Life

In 2020–2021 we noticed that children began showing more interest in the game Gacha Life. After analyzing the search queries, we decided to separate it into a standalone item because in essence it is not just a game, but also a platform for creating animations that children watch almost more often than they play the game. Nearly 4% of all children’s YouTube searches analyzed were for Gacha Life.

The principle is that using the game’s existing interface, users can easily create characters, place them in specific locations and write dialogue for them. The game offers complete creative freedom, and children and adolescents — and sometimes even adults — take advantage of it to create animations on a wide range of topics with different characters, upload them to YouTube and get thousands of views. On the one hand, this develops the imagination, and on the other, children enjoy watching animations created by other children on topics that interest them and are relevant to them.

Meme

We also opted to separate children’s interest in memes. Search queries on memes made up slightly more than 2% of all of children’s YouTube searches analyzed here, but because children frequently input some of the search queries, we are considering them in this report. The most popular terms in these searches were meme animation, memes, mouse sausage and polish cow.

Between November 2020 and April 2021, the clear leader in search queries for memes was the Polish cow video. The most popular video with the “Polish cow” was Dancing Polish Cow 10 Hours, which got more than 18 million views. It does in fact last 10 hours. In this video and other “Polish cow” videos, the eponymous animal dances to a song in Polish. It is best not to read the lyrics, which are about drugs. But before you rush to block all videos with the Polish cow, it is important to understand two things: first, the vast majority of children do not understand the lyrics because they are in Polish, so for them it is just a strange and funny song, and second, children do not take memes as instructions on how to behave, just as in our time hits by the Beatles and Rolling Stones did not spur us to take drugs.

Siren Head

Since time immemorial, children have loved listening to and telling scary stories. Consuming scary stories in moderation is not dangerous — it just gets our adrenaline running under safe conditions. In the past, people told these stories around the campfire, but now, thanks to YouTube, you do not need to travel far to hear one.

A frequent term in children’s search queries was the character Siren Head. A search for this term brings up many videos by the bloggers who are most popular among children with stories about this character. Once upon a time, stories about Slenderman circulated on the Internet. Siren Head has now supplanted him in the ranking of mystical scary creatures.

So if you want to entertain a child with a scary story around the fire at your summer house, think up a story about Siren Head. Just don’t try too hard.

Conclusion

These days we are seeing that children are not only consuming content, but also trying their hands at creating it. Just a few years ago, drawing animations was complicated, but now anyone can install Gacha Life and create even the most rudimentary script and upload a cartoon to YouTube. If you want to dip your toe into music, you no longer need to spend years learning to play the guitar or drums. All you need to do is open special software and learn to tell the difference between kick and snare. These activities are not mutually exclusive, and in the future a child may become seriously interested in music and learn to play one or more instruments. As for creating videos, thanks to TikTok, children are getting inspired and learning not only to shoot interesting videos but also to edit, direct, and set up the shot and lighting.

It is true that everything has become simpler, but who said that was a bad thing? Rather, today’s children can explore different areas in a short period of time. By the time they need to figure out what they want to be when they grow up, they will already have an idea of what they are interested in, what they are not interested in, what they are good at, and what they are not good at, and they will dedicate themselves to an activity they like and are successful at.

Even if you think your child is interested in something suspicious or something you do not understand, do not rush to block access to online resources. First talk to your child: it is entirely possible that the things that seemed scary to you are only the attributes that are associated with a certain music genre, for example. Remind yourself that you might have also frightened your parents with your predilection for dark music.

This report covered children’s interests based on anonymized statistics received from the Kaspersky Safe Kids product. If you use the parental control resource, you can examine which websites your children are visiting, what they’re searching for, and which apps they’re spending time on. This information will help you determine what your children are interested in, support their interests, and forge a trusting relationship with them.