Comments
Children across the globe primarily engaged in YouTube content and games, during the year end holiday in 2020, according to a new Kaspersky Safe Kids study.
Kaspersky analysed the anonymised search queries requested by Kaspersky Safe Kids users from December 20 to January 10, to explore how children offset the lack of outdoor activities owing to Covid-19 restrictions.
The voluntarily provided anonymised metadata included requests made via Bing, Google, Mail.ru, Yahoo!, Yandex, and YouTube, both on mobiles and desktops.
According to the report, “Despite restrictions around the globe, kids managed to primarily amuse themselves with YouTube content (21 per cent) and games (15 per cent) – Minecraft being the most popular. Meanwhile, Donald Trump led the search count for famous people.”
Other popular search requests were related to language translators (11 per cent), communication platforms (10 per cent) and music (9 per cent).
On YouTube, children searched most frequently for video games (37 per cent) and for channels that belonged to game streamers who play different games (39 per cent). 19 per cent of children also engaged with channels that cover specific games like Minecraft. The other most requested games on YouTube were Among Us, Brawl Stars and Gacha Life.
The second most prominent search category which accounted for 21 per cent of queries on YouTube was related to specific bloggers or channels. DIY (Do It Yourself) for instance, was a popular category among children.
The third most popular YouTube search topic was music. The most popular musicians were K-pop bands BlackPink and BTS; singers Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish; and rapper Travis Scott. The most popular songs were ‘Baby Shark’, ‘Dance Monkey’ and ‘Savage Love,’ as per the report.
“Despite many overlapping interests, kids from one region sometimes showed a greater preference for certain content than their peers elsewhere. In particular, children from South Asia (Bangladesh, India) showed the most interest in audio and video content (52.84 per cent),” it added.
Children also kept themselves updated with information on other famous personalities and the latest news. The 45th United States President Donald Trump topped kids’ requests, ahead of other highly-searched celebrities including actress Emma Watson and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
“The popularity of DIY shows that children still love hand-made crafting, and the passion for Gacha Life can facilitate storytelling and cartoon creation skills, while Korean pop stars appeal by teaching dance moves through their video clips. Today, children who do not even know a world without video games, YouTube and messaging apps show they know how to entertain themselves regardless of any pandemic. We, as adults, should learn from them,” said Anna Larkina, web content analysis expert at Kaspersky.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.