It’s one thing when parents/teachers are innocently unaware of something dangerous they’re presenting to kids. It’s another when there’s almost an eagerness to expose tots and teens to darkness, horror, fright… Samples I’ve noticed recently:
- Increasingly gruesome Halloween costumes—like Chucky, the serial-killer doll character of Child’s Play—even for 3-year-olds. Costume packages for this and similar characters show a tiny tot wearing the gruesome costume and holding a bloody weapon. I didn’t find much comfort in the label “knife not included.”
- The Halloween store featured giant-size, snarling, red-eyed robotic creatures. It wasn’t surprising that 12-year-olds thought those were cool—all fun and games. But an adult picked up a very tiny child and held him close to one beast, amused by the child’s terror. There was similar behavior out in the neighborhood on Halloween night: some parents forced their cringing little kids toward adults dressed in horrifying costumes.
- The leader of one online “cult” got young people to send porn pics of themselves. Then he blackmailed and threatened them until they felt forced to do whatever he said, even kill their pets—or themselves. Similar villains are out there, using this “sextortion” tactic. It was just extra alarming that this particular endeavor was started by a teen.
- A super-popular game platform had many underage users. As of this date, lawsuits have been filed, charging predators with exploiting and grooming youngsters, and possible kidnappings/assaults. (Other caution about games is addressed in “A Mod Might Be Odd.”)
- One store chain that features counterculture/alternative products has a number of bloody, snarling, weapon-wielding toys for little kids. The writeup says, “These toys focus on ‘spooky cute’ designs, making classic horror characters accessible for younger audiences.” (Uh… do we really want horror to be “accessible” to tiny tots?) And assorted markets offer collections of stuffed toys that include dark characters—like the Labubu “monsters” and the Kuromi character that’s sold alongside Hello Kitty items.
- A winning clip on America’s Funniest Home Videos featured a 3-year-old saying she wanted to dress as a “wombie” for Halloween. She meant zombie. How did she know that word? She’d watched The Walking Dead with her aunt, who was babysitting. The Walking Dead TV series is rated “for mature audiences.” (At least the mom had not been happy that the child was exposed to this.)
While freaking out trying to process all that…
- A book in the little kids’ section at the store caught my eye. The title: Stranger Things: Hawkins ABCs. (Hawkins is the fictional town where the TV series takes place.) An online description of the TV series says: “Stranger Things is generally considered inappropriate for young children, with recommendations often placing it at age 14+ or 15+ due to intense, graphic horror, gore, and mature themes that increase in intensity after Season 1. While popular with teens, it presents risks regarding intense anxiety, nightmares, and exposure to disturbing scenes of child endangerment.”
ABC books are typically designed for very young kids—you know, A is for Apple, B is for Bird… So if the Stranger Things TV series is NOT for little kids, why would there be (and why would a parent buy) a book to draw little kids toward that series?
I asked for input from a 21-year-old who’s familiar with the TV series. Included in my question was this detail: “For example, the ‘O’ page reads: ‘O is for One, the origin of the evil in Hawkins.’ [The character known as One is the key villain.] But if the ‘evil’ in the town is too dark for little kids…”
Here’s that 21-year-old’s response:
The children’s book is definitely strange! I agree 100% with [the online maturity] rating about the actual show. I think 14 and up is a good cutoff, especially since the whole show isn’t just constant gore or scary dark themes. It has some good lessons for kids in their teens to learn! (Most of the main characters are teens.) It seems a bit contradictory to [the series] rating to make a children’s book about the show though. I would say their making the book is (of course) simply a money grab, whereas any parent buying that for their littles is not helping their children’s early discernment. Especially because kids that age shouldn’t even know what Stranger Things is.
Did you catch that last line?—“Kids that age shouldn’t even know…” The apostle Paul told adult Christians in Rome, “I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil” (Romans 16:19). Reading that verse-for-adults again, and considering what’s been said above about what kids are being pushed toward… isn’t there something strange about this picture?
