Kids Search The Web Like Adults Do

OnlineFamily.Norton is a free service from Symantec that parents can use to track what their kids are doing online.

Over the past several months, they’ve been gathering data on 3.5 Million web searches by kids, and now they’ve released the top 100 search phrases from that data.  It’s important to note that this study only tracked the actions of kids whose families were using the OnlineFamily.Norton software.  There is no “margin of error” given and they aren’t suggesting this is a scientific representation of the entire country… they’re merely reporting the data gathered on their users.

Turns out kids search the web much the same way adults do–yes, even searching for “sex”.  In fact, the words “sex” and “porn” are both in the top ten.  That’s obviously not a good thing, but it’s also not terribly surprising.

Kids also search the web for other websites–something adults do as well that continues to baffle me.  In the top ten are search phrases such as “youtube,” “myspace,” “google,” and “facebook.”  Do we need to have some remedial training for Americans on the difference between the web address field and the search box in a toolbar?

You can see the entire list of the top 100 childrens’ web searches here.