Stranger Things and Big Floppa: Kaspersky shares the trendiest kids’ interests of summer 2022

Woburn, MA – September 12, 2022 – A new Kaspersky study has revealed the most popular kids' interests during the summer of 2022. According to anonymized Google and YouTube search data, Big Floppa was the most popular meme and the fourth season of Stranger Things was the top series of the summer.

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 May 23-29. Over the summer, kids also explored new games, memes and bloggers. Kaspersky analyzed anonymized data provided by users of parental control software Kaspersky Safe Kids from June 1^st, 2022 to August 22^nd, 2022. The data included search queries in Google and YouTube.

Hey, Google! What were kids looking for?  

The most popular meme googled by kids was Big Floppa. One-fifth of all meme requests (20%) were for him.

Big Floppa

During this summer, 33% of kids’ google searches were YouTube-related, while various other 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.

Gaming was another of the most popular categories, with a share of 10%. In particular, Roblox became the leader with 33%, significantly ahead of Minecraft (9%), which has typically been hugely popular among children. Another frequent search request this summer was Nintendo's recently released “Pokemon Scarlet and Violet,” which obtained five percent of searches.

 

What did kids search for in YouTube?

Stranger things

Among all the requests in the Cartoons, Movies and TV Shows category (16% of all YouTube queries), there was huge interest in the fourth season of Stranger Things. Children searched for not only videos related to the series, but also for the show’s actors and characters. 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 accounted for 16% of searches). The most frequently searched videos 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 were actively discussed.

Pink Sauce

Summer bloggers

Games were the top category on YouTube this summer, accounting for the largest number of requests, at 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,” said Anna Larkina, web content analysis expert at Kaspersky. “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.”

The full report about kids online interests is available here.

Here are some tips for keeping your kids safe online:

•       Show interest in your kids’ online activity. Ask them if you can watch their favorite series or listen music tracks together.

•       A good option can be a 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.

•       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 behavior 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

 

About Kaspersky

Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company founded in 1997. Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at usa.kaspersky.com.

Media Contact

Sawyer Van Horn

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