Sex, Porn, Team Jacob, and Michael Jackson Make Norton’s 100 Top Kids’ Online Searches of 2009
These results come from Symantec, developers of the OnlineFamily.Norton, product parents can use with their children to monitor their web usage and hopefully foster discussion.
We don't think it's all that surprising that sex and porn were and will likely be in the future, a popular search topic for kids. This is exactly why parents/guardians need to know what their kids are up to online and make "adjustments" when and where needed.
What we do fInd interesting and maybe a little sad is that the top three searches overall by kids in 2009 were:
1) YouTube
2) Google
3) Facebook
That's right, just like grown-ups, kids go to one search engine looking for a popular site (YouTube.com, Facebook.com) or another search engine (Google.com). Perhaps it shows that even digital natives have issues navigating the Internet.
While YouTube, Google, and Facebook showed up in the top three of both boys’ and girls’ search terms, boys’ #4 search term was “sex” while girls’ #4 was Taylor Swift. However, girls were still interested in the term “sex,” coming in at #5 on their list. Boys’ top 25 search terms were mainly comprised of social networking sites, shopping sites, adult terms, and games. Girls also showed interest in social networking sites, but their top 25 search terms focused more on music, TV, movie, and celebrity-related terms.
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Michael Jackson was the most popular celebrity kids searched for in 2009, coming in at #12 overall. Taylor Swift came in a close second at #13. When broken down by age, teens (13-18) favored Michael Jackson, while tweens (8-12) and kids seven and under chose Taylor Swift
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While kids seven and under spent most of their time searching for gaming related topics, music topped the list for teens and tweens. Thirty-four percent of teens and 27 percent of tweens searched for music-related terms. Miley Cyrus’ song “Party in the USA” came in as the most searched for song by kids in 2009 with the Black Eyed Peas’ hit “Boom Boom Pow” coming in second.
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After a Click Read the Methodology
Methodology
Between Feb. 2, 2009 and Dec. 4, 2009, Norton tracked a total of 14.6 million searches that were submitted by users of their OnlineFamily.Norton service. The list of search terms was ranked from those submitted most frequently to those submitted the least. Aggregate search terms are collected on an anonymous basis through OnlineFamily.Norton. Search terms cannot be associated by Norton with a specific child, adult, or user account. All personal account information is kept completely separate from the monitoring and reporting functionalities of OnlineFamily.Norton. Personal data is not shared or sold to third-parties or advertisers.
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