Teachable Moments: Top Kids’ Searches Include Sex and Porn

By Geoff Duncan Published August 12, 2009

Teachable Moments: Top Kids — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The news won’t come as a surprise to many parents or others tasked with keeping on eye on childrens’ online behavior, but Symantec‘s OnlineFamily.Norton Internet filtering service has identified the top services conducted by children. Some of the results are unsurprising: kids are searching for "YouTube," "Google," "Miley Cyrus," "Taylor Swift," "Fred" (for Fred Figglehorn), eBay, Craigslist, MySpace, and Facebook. Perhaps even less surprising, "sex" and "porn" made it into the top ten kids’ search terms, landing at number four and six, respectively.

The service found kids’ top ten search terms were (in order) YouTube, Google, Facebook, sex, MySpace, porn, Yahoo, Michael Jackson, Fred (for Fred Figglehorn), and eBay. Oh, and #28? Boobs. Other sexually-loaded terms also made the top 100.

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Symantec Internet safety advocate Marian Merritt said the list highlights that parents need to keep an eye on what children do during their online time. "It also helps identify ‘teachable moments’ when parents should be talking with their kids about appropriate online behavior and other issues in their kids’ online lives."

Symantec tracked over 3.5 million searches conducted through OnlineFamily.Norton from February 2008 to July 2009 to assemble the list.

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