Squid games and 10/11 year olds

[Blendedperfectly25]

My DD is year 6, she comes home every day talking about squid games because her whole class are obsessed.

she then asked if she could watch it, I had never watched it so I put on episode 1 last night just for me to watch to see if it was suitable.

I am shocked at how many 10 year olds are watching this ? I know today I will have the debate with daughter who claim life is so unfair and she won’t fit in if she doesn’t watch it.

anyone else let their 10 year olds watch it ?

Considering it’s a 15, I suspect many intelligent and mature 14 year olds will have watched it! I would be more concerned about a 14 year old unable to differentiate between a TV show and real life tbh.

Lots of children (mostly boys) from perfectly lovely families watched Squid Games in y6 class . There was a lot of playground role playing gunning people down during games for a while - they clearly had actually watched it.

They were also watching serious amounts of porn. My dd was very upset by some of the gestures and language the boys started using. It drove her to insist on going to an all girls school for secondary, as she said she’d had enough of boys asking her to suck their cocks.

At age 10 and 11.

My son (10yo - Yr5) came home from his Dad's and said he and his dad had watched it together. I was absolutely fuming!

A lot of the kids in his class are claiming to have watched it too.

DC was same when in primary school. I said no. He grumbled. Now 16 he's watching them, enjoys it but says we were right to say no when he was younger.

I watched the reality show version on Netflix, that was suitable enough as it was clear that the people were "out" rather than killed.

My year two class are obsessed with playing red light green light at playtime.

I don't think any of them have actually watched squid game but I think they have definitely seen clips of the games on YouTube or TikTok but mostly I think it's coming from games on Roblox.

We love Squid Game (as you can tell by my user name) but we didn’t allow DD to watch it till she was 15. She already knew some of the games as she’d seen them on YouTube. She would have been 11 odd when it came out but I don’t remember her mentioning it. This season has a couple of K-pop idols in it which might explain some of the hype.

The actual games are fine as they’re games Korean kids have played for years. Maybe buy your kid one of the games so he can play it with friends.

Mine has watched it, but I wouldn't tell anyone in RL she has.

Shes also watched the hunger games which is quite gory but a 12 and similar genre, I guess it depends on the kids.

Maybe I am more relaxed about it as I watched The Evil Dead, poltergeist, Amityville horror and The Shining when I was around 9 or 10.

There is a HUGE difference between knowing of a piece of pop culture and watching a piece of pop culture. Some people bizarrely can't separate the two and assume that if a child talks about Squid Game, they've clearly sat down and watched all 17 episodes of both seasons. I've never read any Harry Potter books but I obviously know who he is, along with the other characters and I'm loosely aware of the plot.

The easiest solution whenever DD asks about very popular but age-inappropriate pieces of media is just to give her a summary of it. I tell her she's too young to watch it but I answer all her questions without banning it outright or making a huge deal of it. Squid Game is mainstream media (literally most watched Netflix show in the world), not a snuff film, and it seem ridiculous to forbid a child from being aware of it.

She likes the Mingle Song from Squid Game so we listen to it. She's seen plenty of imagery of the pink guards so I tell her those are characters from the show. I tell her it's about a game show where the losing contestants end up dying. None of that is graphic or forbidden or taboo for a child to grasp. Plenty of video games include the concept of dying if you lose. I'm obviously not going to let her watch full episodes in all graphic detail, but I also don't believe in censoring mainstream pop culture.

Also she's watched stranger things too 😬

I really don’t see what’s funny about such a young child watching either of these shows. DD had to stop watching the final season of Stranger Things because she found it so awful.

Both you and your child sound completely desensitised, and you sound very immature.

@Ddakji yes I am almost 50 and still am immature, I don't recall laughing about it though.

Anyway, is she turns into a serial killer you can say you told me so.

What was the 😬 for then?

It's a eeek face, not a smile (as I know it's not ideal) but dd loves it, she's very into k pop and has an older sister so wants what she shouldn't have at times.

She is certainly not desensitised, nor am I, we are quite a normal nice family actually. If I'm honest I'm a bit surprised I admitted to this on MN!

I think a lot of children think they know squid games without ever watching it.

Red light green light is just a. Basic child’s game under many name. Hot chocolate being one I know of. Marbles is marbles.

They hear older siblings talking about it.

My 8 year old talks about squid games. She’s never watched it. Her best friends talk about it and we parents talk and none of them have watched and they are the types to call spade a spade, will admit when their child has maybe watched something a little too old under supervision.

My oldest has watched it and plays the songs. His old enough. So she knows the songs.

Eek because she’s watching something she shouldn’t and you’re not in control of that? My DD is very into Kpop but we still didn’t allow her to watch Squid Game at that age. I think there’s a bit of a difference between New Jeans or Twice and Squid Game, don’t you?

The final season of Stranger Things is full-on horror, Exorcist level stuff. I genuinely can’t understand why you would allow such a young child to watch that. How old is her sister? Is there really nothing more age appropriate you can watch together?

Compared to the 10/11 year olds in the op! ie I don’t let a 14 year old watch it, let alone a 10 year old. Clearly parents are letting younger kids watch it - I’m not one of them.

I would be much more concerned about teens who cannot differentiate between TV shows and real life.

In my view, intelligent and mature DC should be encouraged to watch high-quality TV programming- it develops focus, analytical and evaluation skills.

I find it hard to believe that it's only rated a 15 over there. In my opinion it should be a higher rating, but if I was a parent who didn't know anything about it I would probably let my mature 14 year old watch it, purely based on the rating.

I'm in the US where the rating is MA - "This program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. " This seems a lot more appropriate, although I think it would be too much for a lot of 17 year olds as well. My 22 year old won't watch it because she knows she would struggle with the violence and gore.

I think that proves my point. Some 22 year olds will struggle to watch it, just as some 14 year olds will. However, many 14 year olds and 22 year olds will be fine.

There isn’t some arbitrary change that happens at age 15 that suddenly makes a DC more mature.

There isn’t some arbitrary change that happens at age 15 that suddenly makes a DC more mature.

I completely agree with this, but I think as parents we sometimes need to enforce an arbitrary cutoff. I would argue that even the most mature 14 year olds shouldn't be exposed to it, and there is a lot of brain development that happens between 14 and 17.

@TreeSquirrel I also realize that this is my point of view and others may disagree. What I do think is important is that parents consider these things carefully, rather than just letting their kids watch anything "because their friends are all watching it"!

We had all of this last year in Y5 and Y6. We are now Y7 and it’s still a no. Our junior school parent demographic was very much MC professional, but it seems lots of their kids were watching things completely inappropriate for the age. Some of the girls in Y4/5 were watching Love Island with their mums. Not really sure what they were thinking to be honest but it’s a hard no from me.

The person I was replying to wasn’t talking about a teen - she seemed to be talking about. 9/10 year old.

DD is 15 and loves Squid Game and we had lots of good chats about the issues it raises after each episode. She was much more scared of the 4th season of Stranger Things and decided to stop watching after a couple of episodes (she’d been fine with the previous seasons).