A recent investigation has turned up an interesting finding on what kids are searching for online. Africa, with South Africa as focus, was part of the survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab.

The latest report on the online activities of children also highlights the importance of protecting them when online.

For example, video content globally, comprised 17 percent of searches over the last months. Although many videos watched as a result of these searches may be harmless, it is still possible for children to accidentally end up watching videos that contain inappropriate content.

The report shows anonymised statistics from Kaspersky Lab’s flagship consumer solutions for Windows PCs and Macs that have the Parental Control module switched on and from Kaspersky Safe Kids, a standalone service for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

For example, the report presents search results on the ten most-popular languages* for the last 6 months. The data shows that the video & audio category – including requests related to any video content, streaming services, video bloggers, series and movies – are the most regularly ‘googled’ by children (17 percent of the total requests).

The second and third places go to translation (14 percent) and communication (10 percent) websites respectively. Interestingly, games websites sit in fourth place, generating only nine percent of the total search requests.

We can also see a clear language difference for search requests: for example, video and music websites are typically searched for in English, which can be explained by the fact that the majority of movies, TV series and musical groups have English names.

Spanish-speaking kids carry out more requests for translation sites, while communication services are mostly searched for in Russian.

More than any other nationality, Chinese-speaking children look for education services, while French-speaking kids are more interested in sport and games websites.

In turn, German-speaking requests dominate in the “shopping” category. The leading number of search requests for porn are in Arabic, and for anime are in Japanese.

“Kids in different countries have different interests and online behaviors, but what links them all is their need to be protected online from potentially harmful content. Children looking for animated content could accidentally open a porn video. Or they could start searching for innocent videos and unintentionally end up on websites containing violent content, both of which could have a long-term impact on their impressionable and vulnerable minds,” says Anna Larkina, Web-content Analysis Expert at Kaspersky Lab.

The second most popular category of websites visited in South Africa by these users is software, audio, and video. In South Africa, this category accounted for 17 percent.

Websites with this content have become significantly more popular since last year, when it was only the fifth most popular category globally at six percent. The top four is rounded off with electronic commerce (4.2 percent) and alcohol, tobacco, and websites about narcotics (3.9 percent), which is a new addition compared to this time last year.

The mobile trend is again highlighted in the figures for computer games, which are now in fifth place locally on the list at three percent. As kids continue to show a preference for mobile games rather than computer games, this category will only continue to decrease in popularity on computers over the coming months and years.