October 02, 2026
By Hashir Ahsan
ISLAMABAD
Kaspersky, a leading international cybersecurity and antivirus products provider, has released a comprehensive and detailed research report regarding children’s digital behaviors, social media usage, and the cyber threats they face on the internet in Pakistan.
Kaspersky compiled this special data after conducting a scientific analysis of anonymized data from its parental control software, ‘Kaspersky Safe Kids’.
This report officially presents details and statistics regarding the most popular social media applications among young children and teenagers in Pakistan, their preferred content, online activities, and the numerous serious cybersecurity threats faced during daily internet usage.
Covering the percentage of apps used by children in Pakistan, Kaspersky’s research report revealed that the majority of children’s time in the country is spent watching online video content, using social media sites, and communicating through messaging apps.
According to the report’s statistics, the global video-sharing platform ‘YouTube’ stands first among Pakistani children with a 31.2% usage share. Nearly one-third of children’s total online time is spent watching various types of videos on YouTube. Following this, the famous photo and video-sharing app ‘Instagram’ is the second most used platform with an 18.8% share, emerging as the most favorite social media platform, particularly among children and youth.
Meanwhile, the instant messaging application ‘WhatsApp’ has emerged as the most used messaging app among children for daily messaging and mutual communication.
The report also closely examines the searching habits and content preferences of Pakistani children on YouTube. According to Kaspersky, Pakistani children primarily search for four main topics on YouTube.
Among these, the largest share belongs to ‘Music’, which children search for and listen to the most online. Apart from this, various ‘Cartoons & Animation’ series are immensely popular among younger children. In third place, there is a strong trend among children toward watching ‘Influencer Content’ from digital content creators, vloggers, and gaming influencers and following their videos. The report identifies ‘Sports’ as the fourth major priority area, where children enthusiastically search for content and highlights related to international and national sports, especially cricket matches and other major global sporting events.
However, in its report, Kaspersky severely warned parents, teachers, and guardians that the growing trend of social media and online gaming has brought children to the brink of multiple emerging and complex cyber threats. According to the report, the first and biggest threat is ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deepfakes’, where there are significantly increased concerns that personal photos and videos uploaded by children on social media could be misused to create fake and inappropriate content using modern AI and deepfake technology.
The second major threat is ‘Online Grooming and Blackmailing’, in which strangers and malicious individuals build friendships with children through multiplayer online games and social media, subsequently attempting to exploit them psychologically, financially, or emotionally.
The third fundamental threat is ‘Phishing and Data Theft’, where innocent children often click on attractive online links, free gaming credits, digital gifts, or promotional offer links, severely compromising thesafety of their own and their parents’ sensitive data.
In the concluding part of the report, cybersecurity experts provided important and practical suggestions to Pakistani parents and guardians to ensure children’s digital safety.
Experts emphasized that instead of strict restrictions or forced severity on children’s internet use, parents should communicate with them in a friendly and open environment and educate them about the harms of the cyber world. As a second measure, parents are advised to completely restrict children from sharing personal information, private photos, school names, and locations with strangers on social media.
As a third key step, parents are advised to use modern ‘Parental Control Software’ to monitor children’s online activities and block unethical or dangerous websites and content. Experts state that it is essential to foster right and healthy digital habits in children from the very beginning so that they adopt a responsible, cautious, and safe behavior in the online world.
In a court case regarding social media usage by underage children, the PTA submitted a written statement maintaining that it fully recognizes the importance of protecting children from online risks and establishing a responsible and safe digital environment in the country.
However, it stated that it is a regulatory body established under the Constitution and the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Act, 1996, and can only exercise powers conferred upon it under the relevant laws. According to the PTA, it cannot establish a new legal system for age verification merely through administrative orders or decisions, nor can it set a general or universal minimum age limit of 16 years for social media use, nor can it act beyond its legal mandate to impose new restrictions or obligations on international social media platforms.
This is because the authority for such policy-making and legislative measures lies solely with Parliament, the Federal Government, and other legislative bodies.
Referencing Section 37 of PECA (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act) 2016, Article 19 of the Constitution, and the 2021 Public Content Rules in detail, the written report clarified how the current framework for content removal or blocking is executed.
The PTA stated that through continuous operations, it maintains an updated database of approximately 1.5 million URLs, while out of more than 1,789,000 URLs processed across various platforms and categories so far, 88.20% have been blocked.
Covering the legal situation following the PECA Amendment Act 2025, the report mentioned that through amendments to PECA, a new authority named “Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority” (SMPRA) is being formed, after which the PTA’s current role in content blocking has become further limited and temporary in nature.
Covering technical aspects in detail, the PTA informed the court that due to HTTPS encryption in internet traffic and the fact that OTT (Over-The-Top) foreign social media companies are not registered in Pakistan, it is technically impossible to selectively block individual content or pages hosted on their servers. In such situations, the entire platform has to be blocked, which affects legitimate content as well.
Because foreign social media companies do not have offices in Pakistan, they operate under their own ‘Community Guidelines’ rather than local laws, leading to differences in the definition of prohibited content and posing challenges in blocking. On the other hand, the PTA presented a record of national and international efforts undertaken for Child Online Protection.
These include agreements and discussions with UNICEF, TikTok, Meta, GSMA, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Under these initiatives, nationwide efforts include the establishment of the toll-free helpline 1121, publication of guidebooks for parents and guardians, awareness programs for teachers and students in schools and universities, SMS campaigns reaching millions of users, publication of articles in newspapers, and the recent launch of the ‘Teen Accounts’ security feature on Instagram for Pakistani users.
PTA stated that foreign laws (such as Australia’s Online Safety Act) cannot automatically apply to Pakistan, nor can they grant new powers to the PTA without legislation.