Children play "Squid Game": beatings and injuries after the Netflix hit

The “children’s games” from the socially critical horror drama series “Squid Game” hit schoolyards and children’s rooms. Experts are sounding the alarm.

Frankfurt – “Squid Game” conquers the world. The socially critical ratings hit by the South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk has more than 100 million hits and was number 1 on the Netflix charts in around one hundred countries. “Squid Game” is now the most watched Netflix series. And the phenomenon spills over into real life. The hit of this year’s Halloween costumes: Everything about “Squid Game”.

But not only that. While in “Squid Game”, to put it simply, children’s games are taken from the playground and transformed into a fight for life and death, the opposite is now happening in a weakened form: the games shown in the Netflix hit spill back from the screen the schoolyards.

The games, which are strongly anchored in Korean culture, no longer only reach the children’s groups in their original, innocent form. Due to the fight for survival, which was only added by “Squid Game”, in the series losers of the games are “disqualified”, which means a euphemism for killed, the children’s games are becoming increasingly brutal. If the protagonists are murdered in the fictional saga, it now happens that the losers among the playing children are mistreated or beaten up.

Belgium: School children beat up while re-enacting Squid Game

This is what happened in Belgium, for example, where schoolchildren played the game “Ox on the mountain”. In “Squid Game” it says “Red Light, Green Light”. Anyone who did not make it to the finish line in time or was caught moving was beaten up. In Belgium, but also in England, Italy and Sweden, schools then issued urgent warnings against copying the “Squid Game” games or even using violence.

Parents were asked to show their children the consequences of such games and to convey to them that the use of violence in “Squid Game” was only fictional. In Kent, England, a school was even forced to initiate additional prevention of violence due to the “squid game” hype.

In the meantime, reports are increasing that children injure themselves when trying to make the so-called ppopgi or dalgona, a sweet related to the honeycomb toffee. In the “Squid Game”, the participants have to work under time pressure to extract a pattern that was previously stamped in a cookie shape from this hard biscuit made from caramelized sugar and baking powder. If you don’t make it in time or if the candy breaks apart, death awaits you.

“Squid Game”: Children inflict severe burns while making Ppopgi

A so-called challenge to imitate this game is currently circulating on the TikTok platform, which is particularly popular with children and young people. In order to get the hard biscuits they need, users of the platform will also find baking instructions there. Several English-language media are currently reporting accidents during preparation. For example, a 14-year-old from Australia burned his nerves when an unsuitable microwave cup exploded in his hand. The mixture of sugar, baking soda, and water heats up so much in the microwave that the cup couldn’t withstand the heat.

Then the mixture of the still liquid caramelized sugar and plastic flowed down from the knee to the shin and, according to his mother, “burned like toffee to the nerves”. Just like that, the boy was able to avoid a serious operation, but now he has to wear a pressure bandage for a long time and is suffering from great pain. In the meantime, such reports are piling up, with three cases recently known in Australia alone.

It is scenes like this that call in the experts. Linda Wickham, principal of Dulwich Hill Public School in Sydney, wrote a fire letter calling on parents to be more careful about monitoring their children’s Netflix consumption. With just a few clicks it is possible for children to create their own access, in which only content intended for their age group can be accessed. “Squid Game”, for example, is only approved for people aged 16 and over in most regions.

The expert appeals to parents to talk to their children about “Squid Game”

“Squid Game features scenes that show extreme violence and gore, inappropriate language, and scary moments that are simply not suitable and rated for elementary school and early high school kids,” wrote Wickham. The teacher also reported that she herself knew six-year-old children who had seen “Squid Game” and warned: “This inappropriate content has a negative impact on games on the playground.”

In an interview with RP online, Stefan Drewes, head of the Center for School Psychology of the City of Düsseldorf for 15 years, urged schools to set “clear boundaries” and to prevent the replay of “Squid Game”, but also said: “The high Interest in the series also offers opportunities to get into conversation with children and young people about existential issues. ”Simply ignoring“ Squid Game ”, however, is not a solution, according to Drewes. Parents and teachers have to deal with the fact that the series is now on the market and is therefore also consumed by children and young people.

Kita children in Schleswig-Holstein play “Squid Games”

Here parents have a duty to speak with their children in an understanding way, especially about violent scenes. Especially since, according to Drewes, children and young people in particular would like to watch such series among themselves and not together with adults. He advises parents to examine the series themselves first in order to be prepared if they have to react. Especially if children already have “a certain tendency to violence or violent fantasies”, special attention must be paid to them, especially in the school environment, according to Drewes.

So far, the appeals seem to have gone unheard in some places. In Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, according to the Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher, even children at a daycare center played “Squid Game”. The management of the daycare center addressed the parents with an appeal: “Don’t let your children watch this series. Not even when you’re there. “(Mirko Schmid)