ISLAMABAD: A global cybersecurity firm disclosed Wednesday that top five most popular Android apps among kids in Pakistan are YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok and Roblox.
Kaspersky has released its annual report on kids’ digital interests with the analysis, covering the period from May 2024 to April 2025. It revealed a growing fascination with AI-powered chatbots. YouTube remains the most popular app among children globally, while WhatsApp overtook TikTok for second place.
In today’s interconnected world, children are engaging with digital technology more than ever before. Recent studies indicate that 8 to 10 year-old children spend an average of six hours daily on screens, while preteens (ages 11–14) average about nine hours per day.
In Pakistan top 5 of the most popular Android apps remained YouTube (42.90% of time spent on the platform), WhatsApp (16.07%), Instagram (8.97%), Tiktok (5.88%), and Roblox (4.44%), while Character. AI was 13th in the rating - used 0.97% of time.
In this year’s report, Kaspersky found a surge of interest in Artificial Intelligence tools. While no AI apps appeared in the Top 20 most-used applications in 2023-2024 time period, “Character.AI” has now entered the list, showing that children are not only curious about AI but are actively integrating it into their digital lives. More than 7.5% of all search queries were about AI chatbots, led by well-known names like ChatGPT, Gemini, and especially Character.AI — a platform that lets users create or interact with bots mimicking fictional or real characters. This marks a sharp rise from last year: in the 2023–2024 report, AI-related queries made up just 3.19% of all searches, increasing more than twice this year.
The most common online activity among kids was searching on Google for streaming platforms — almost 18% of all queries were related to watching videos. Unsurprisingly, YouTube remains the clear favourite Android app, growing from 28.13% to 29.77% over the past year. WhatsApp rose to second place with 14.72%, overtaking TikTok (12.76%), while Snapchat and Facebook continued to decline. This shift may reflect evolving communication habits — children are using chat apps more frequently to share links, memes and short videos with friends.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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