Scrunchies are back, TikTok dance challenges are now YouTube entertainment, and Old Town Road is your new favourite song.

Through PopJam, our kid-safe content sharing platform, we constantly keep an eye on the latest kids trends. We don’t collect data from PopJammers, but we do watch what the community is interested in. You can check out out our report for Q1 Kids Trends here and our blog on Gacha and Dollify here. Luckily, Momo has disappeared, but memes, magic and Gacha still remain incredibly popular among the under-13 audience. 

VSCO girls

There’s no missing the VSCO girls trend – the app that became a look that became a lifestyle. This Buzzfeed article has a good intro to the concept, but we wanted to explore the impact the trend was having on kids not using 13+ social.

VSCO is a photo-editing and sharing app for intended for 13+. The app offers standard access or paid membership (for filters and community). VSCO girls have a very specific ‘aesthetic’, and a checklist of props: scrunchies, crop tops, Vans, metal straws and water bottles. 

VSCO girls celebrate both the aesthetic and kindness, and after arriving on PopJam, the trend grew fast. In Jan 2019, we had just 13 mentions of VSCO/ VSCO girl/ girls and 5,054 mentions of aesthetic. In July 2019, we had 1,338 mentions of VSCO/ VSCO girl/ girls and 11,252 mentions of aesthetic. For the large part, the mentions are positive, simply referencing a group or sub-community that PopJammers belong to and use to describe themselves in their bios. 

TikTok Challenges

There are a number of global influencers that PopJammers have been watching on YouTube, including The Norris Nuts, ItsFunneh and Denis, but TikTok challenges continue to be the most popular with kids. Some participate on the TikTok app, some just watch, and others just watch the compilations and collections on YouTube (a few PopJammers say they’re not allowed to use TikTok, but their parents are fine with them watching it on YouTube). 

Recent popular TikTok challenges have seen Hit the Woah, Old Town Road (more on this down below) and the Git Up Dance Challenge land with PopJammers, who not only get to watch, but they get to carry out the dance moves with their pals, the same way they did with the Floss and Orange Justice.

Interested in kids trends? Every month we create a Kids Insights Report, digging into all the trends in our highly-engaged PopJam community. If you’d like to check out this month’s report, click here.

Old Town Road

Asking PopJammers about music is always interesting. Pop music is the most popular genre of music for PopJammers. Billie Eilish is currently the coolest artist and Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes and Marshmello also get global mentions. Country music is big in the US/ Canada and K-pop gets high mentions in UK/Ireland, US/ Canada and Australia, with call outs to BTS and BLACKPINK. Other types of music that tend to be enjoyed are because of their meme status.

Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road started on SoundCloud, became a TikTok challenge and then a meme. PopJammers mentioned the song and artist when asked about their fave music, and also when we asked them about what was trending.

Collectibles

Kids are nearly always collecting. There has always been high mentions of slime and stones, shells and other natural items. Recently, rocks, shells, slime and scrunchies have been very popular. Scrunchies, crop tops and a few other items associated with being a VSCO girl have had bigger mentions in the US/ Canada and Australia in particular. 

L.O.L. Surprise! figures are the most mentioned branded toy (and a product that PopJammers think will be huge this Christmas). However, Australian PopJammers have been going crazy over collectibles from shops – Coles have launched the Little Shop 2 collection and Woolworths have released Lion King Ooshies.

While Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft remain popular, YouTube and TikTok are currently at the heart of current kids’ trends. We’ll keep you updated with what the experts tell us.

If you’re interested in staying on top of technology and kidtech news, we publish several kids industry newsletters which now have over 10k subscribers reading monthly. Sign up now!


Craig Donaghy is Head of Community Insight for PopJam, the largest kid-safe social content platform.