How statistics were collected
Website categorization
Our family of solutions for home use includes Kaspersky Safe Kids, which scans all the websites that children try to access. If a site falls into one of the 14 categories listed below, the product sends an anonymous notification to Kaspersky Security Network without sharing any personal user data. Parents decide on their own what content to block and configure the solution accordingly, but anonymous statistics are still collected for all 14 categories.
Information for this report was collected from Windows PCs and laptops, as well as iOS and Android mobile devices over 12 months from May 2024 to April 2025.
Kaspersky Safe Kids has the following web filtering categories:
- Adult content
- Alcohol, tobacco, drugs
- Anonymizers
- Electronic commerce
- Gambling, lotteries, sweepstakes
- Internet communication
- Job search
- News media
- Profanity, obscenity
- Religions, religious associations
- Software, audio, video
- Video games
- Violence
- Weapons, explosives, pyrotechnics
Search query filtering
Search queries provide valuable insights into what kids are interested in. Kaspersky Safe Kids is designed to filter search queries in five search engines (Bing, Google, Mail.ru, Yahoo!, Yandex) and on YouTube. Queries are filtered based on six potentially dangerous topics: adult, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, racism, and profanity.
This report includes statistics on search queries in YouTube and Google April–May 2025. We take 100% as the total number of queries in the top 1,000 search queries in YouTube and Google. Ranking is based on search volume regardless of region, and popularity is measured as a percentage of total queries.
We divide search queries into the following categories and subcategories.
- Google:
- Video streaming services
- Video games
- Translate
- Online education
- Social media
- AI tools
- Sports
- Messaging
- Miscellaneous
- Online shopping
- Email providers
- Edit tools
- Document tools
- Online maps
- Anime, manga
- Global internet services
- Music streaming services
- Search engines
- Memes
- News
- Adult content
- YouTube:
- Music
- YouTube bloggers and channels
- YouTube gaming influencer
- Video games
- Cartoons
- Memes
- TV shows
- Miscellaneous
- Movies
- ASMR
- Sports
- Anime, manga
- Online education
- Adult content
Program control
Kaspersky Safe Kids lets parents control and limit how much time their children spend in different apps on their devices. In this study, we used anonymized data from May 2024 through April 2025 on how much time kids around the world spend using apps on Android devices.
The top 20 most popular apps are ranked based on the total time spent on them, without dividing by region. The share of each app in the ranking reflects the portion of total time children spent on it.
Popular site categories
Today, browsing the web is not as popular as it was 10 years ago, with most activity taking place within existing global platforms. This explains why the Software, audio, video category accounts for more than half (57.57%) of all visits, as it includes video and audio streaming platforms that are extremely popular among kids, especially YouTube.
Website categories. May 2024 through April 2025
The Internet communication category (26.55%) came second. It includes social media platforms, instant messengers, and forums. Note that despite the availability of communication apps, kids also use their web versions. Video games, traditionally one of the most popular categories among children, came third with a relatively low figure of just 3.42%. Next with 2.55% is Electronic commerce, which encompasses online stores and everything related to online shopping, including digital content. News media sites account for only 2.23%, which reflects some interest among children in news, although not very significant. It is worth noting that adult content accounts for only 1.98% of queries, which is even less than news media.
Most popular Android apps
To better understand which apps kids spend time in, we compiled the top 20 most popular apps among children and compared them with results from the previous year.
YouTube remains the most popular platform among kids worldwide, with its user base continuing to expand. Compared with our previous study, the amount of time spent on the platform increased from 28.13% in 2023–2024 to 29.77% in 2024–2025.
Android app popularity. May 2024 through April 2025
WhatsApp comes in second place with 14.72% (14.58% in 2023–2024). Over the past year, this app even overtook TikTok, which lost 2 percentage points (pp) and ended up in third place with 12.76% (14.71% in 2023–2024).
Instagram (8.54%), Google Chrome (6.68%), and Roblox (6.56%) remain unchanged from last year in fourth, fifth, and sixth places, respectively. However, Brawl Stars with 4.47% compared to last year’s 3.06% is now ahead of Snapchat (2.53%, 3.18% in 2023–2024) by a full 2 pp. YouTube Kids (2.46%) and Netflix (1.87%) remain in virtually the same position. In 2024–2025, Telegram (1.70%) overtook two major applications: Facebook (1.40%) and Spotify (1.31%). Also, the free-to-play Free Fire battle royale game and Viber are no longer in the top 20. Instead, they were replaced by the FC Mobile football game from Electronic Arts (0.65%) and the Character.ai chatbot (0.65%), which we’ll talk about more in the search queries section.
What kids searched for in Google
Analyzing Google search queries provides valuable insights into kids’ current interests.
Popular search queries in Google. April–May 2025
With 17.94% of the total, queries related to streaming video services comfortably top the list. YouTube was the most popular Google search among kids, but a significant portion were also for Netflix, Twitch, Prime Video, and Disney Plus.
Video game queries are in second place with 13.27%. The most popular video game search query was Poki (or poki.com, a website with free games), followed by Roblox and Minecraft. During the study, we also noted increased interest in the Sprunki music creation game and the upcoming release of the Nintendo Switch 2, so parents, get ready!
In third place are queries for online translation (10.39%), with the word translate in different languages the most popular. Everything related to training and education comes in fourth (9.5%). For example, children are interested in the Scratch programming language, school diaries, climate change issues, and much more.
Search queries related to social media are in fifth place with 9.29%. The social platforms that kids searched for most on Google were Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and TikTok.
Next are search queries about AI assistants and chatbots with 7.55%. The most popular query is ChatGPT, followed by Gemini, DeepSeek, and Character.ai, which was noted earlier in the top 20 Android apps.
Сharacter.ai lets you create chatbots with specific personalities so you can communicate with your own custom bot or talk to existing ones created by other users.
As part of our analysis of Google search queries, we also want to highlight one more category: Memes, which account for only 0.66%. However, almost all meme-related queries this year were related to brainrot = and not just the Italian Tralalero Tralala. The second most popular search query, for example, is Tung Tung Tung Sahur, a song by BRAINROTTEN IMBICILE.
What kids searched for on YouTube
Our final section is about children’s interests on YouTube, their favorite platform. These statistics clearly illustrate the lives of modern children around the world and the content they consume.
Popular search queries on YouTube. April–May 2025
The Music category took first place this year with 21.11%, up from fourth place with 17.12% last year. In general, we didn’t notice any clearly defined new trends this year. Kids searched for a little bit of everything: phonk, which remains popular today; nightcore; the song Anxiety by Doechii; classic Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift; the mega-popular Sabrina Carpenter, and, much to the delight of modern parents, Eminem. The most popular song we found was JENNIE — like JENNIE, and the most popular group remains BLACKPINK.
The second most popular search query on YouTube (17.17%) is YouTube bloggers and channels. This category mostly includes bloggers who film lifestyle, challenges, and other entertainment content, with the exception of gaming bloggers and streamers. MrBeast has been the most popular YouTube blogger for several years, and he continues to lead in terms of query volumes this year. Kids also searched a lot for Fede Vigevani (Spanish), Taspio (Portuguese), and [ Unchained ] (French).
In third place (17.15%) is YouTube gaming influencers. The most popular gaming bloggers include Technoblade, Dream, Grox, Paluten (German) and Jazzghost (Portuguese). Note that they all create content about Minecraft, which has been the most popular game among kids around the world for many years.
The Video games category (fourth place, 10.14%) includes queries related to games in general, without mentioning a specific blogger. The top five most popular queries in this category were Minecraft, Brawl Stars, Fortnite, Sprunki, and Roblox. We already mentioned Sprunki in the section about Google search queries. The fact that the game made it to the top of YouTube’s trending searches next to the extremely popular Brawl Stars and Roblox is a sign that it’s worth paying attention to. However, it’s most likely a temporary trend that we won’t see next year. YouTube is currently full of Sprunki-related videos, from “let’s play” to full-fledged cartoons featuring Sprunki characters.
In fifth place are cartoon-related search queries at 6.19%. The most popular are MSA (My Story Animated), Сocomelon, Troopa Deluxe, and Peppa Pig.
Next up is the Memes category with 4.87% of the top 1,000 search queries on YouTube. We already noted the popularity of Brainrot memes in terms of Google search queries. YouTube search statistics confirm that Italian brainrot is currently extremely popular. The top queries on YouTube are Tralalero Tralala, Tung Tung Tung Sahur, Skibidi Toilet (still at the top!), Brainrot, Italian brainrot, and Bombardino crocodilo. We won’t get into what brainrot is again or why Italian brainrot in particular is so popular, we’ll just let the statistics speak for themselves. These really are the number one memes among kids all over the world right now…
Conclusion
Our observations this year show that kids today have fairly stable digital environments and habits. They watch YouTube videos, play Minecraft and Roblox, and watch shows on Netflix. These are the things they’ll get nostalgic about in the future, with K-pop as their official soundtrack. However, some trends are more fleeting. For example, Fortnite was practically the number one game a couple of years ago, but Brawl Stars has since taken its place. The content that changes most quickly is memes. They constantly give rise to new characters, songs, and even entire meta universes. Not so long ago, adults were shocked by the Skibidi Toilet meme, and are horrified today by brainrot content and its downright absurdity. But meme trends quickly come and go, while Minecraft Let’s Play videos and TikTok dances to the latest K-pop songs stick around for much longer.
Also, don’t forget this important fact that no longer needs any proof: kids are the first to master new technologies. This study shows that children aren’t just using ChatGPT, they’re creating full-fledged characters from chatbots and talking with them in Character.ai. While most adults are still trying to wrap their heads around the very existence of AI, kids today are using ChatGPT as an integral part of how they interact with the digital space. To keep kids safe online, we need more than just lectures about harmful online content. We need to try and understand what interests them and gently adjust the trajectory of their online journey based on these interests without strict prohibitions. Kaspersky Safe Kids can help you achieve this goal.