Recently, the Netflix drama series Squid Game has gone viral on social media which everyone can now access the show. Even though the show was R-rated (not suitable to be seen by children), young children were able to watch through social media which they were getting influenced due to the violent actions. They would act violently in school while playing games with each other and be less collaborative. The Squid Game was released on September 17, 2021, which was directed to criticize the poor and rich gap in Korea. Without knowing the hidden, true theme of the show, young children only focused on the cruel action scenes as if the show was brainwashing the children.

How do young children even know and watch Squid Game even it’s restricted as R-rated? People often repost videos on social media to gain popularity and follow the trend even though it’s illegal. Those people who repost videos don’t even realize that their actions could influence many others. The main idea of Squid Game was surviving ‘independently’ which shows people’s strong desire and wants of surviving. This way of teaching a lesson for young kids was a bad idea and they were not ready for it. As an older sister of a young sister, Lua was interviewed with the following question, “Do you think it’s an appropriate lesson for young children to learn?” She answered, “sometimes people should be selfish and think about themselves in priority, but as young children, they should learn how to collaborate and help each other… The Squid Game only shows the extreme parts of being selfish.” which she agreed that the young children are too early to learn about being independent. Even the young children were not fully educated, they had to learn through the Squid Game in the wrong way of teaching.

For spreading about the Squid Game, reposting was not only the problem, but the advertisements were also one of the main issues. Because the advertisements don’t have age restrictions, young children were able to watch the advertisement and get to know about the Squid Game. For the solution, Mr. French, an elementary principle of KIS, has “encouraged the parents to do was buy the subscription youtube… set parental controls… so they have control over on what they see.”

While Squid Game was ranked as the top-ranking original series for the most days ever and was widely spread, not all people also enjoyed watching Squid Game. Lua Lim, a KIS senior, said in the interview that the show was too violent even for her that she didn’t want to show her younger sister nor watch by herself. She also commented that because the show was r-rated and not only the violence was shown but also the sexual scenes were common, she believed having young children watch the Squid Game shouldn’t be allowed.

To know more about the perspectives of young children, an interview was done with 11 years old girl. Hyunseo Lim, the younger sister of Lua Lim. She reported that “friends seemed to act more violently in school by mocking the scenes in Squid Game”. She also refused to watch the show due to strong violence and the shocks she got from it. Hyunseo agreed that friends and herself seemed to learn more from what they watch and see than listening to the lectures.

According to Mr. French, “especially from grade 2 and up probably every elementary school student has either heard the idea of the Squid Game.” which is a big issue because all the young generations started to know about the violence at younger ages than us. They would also often play the traditional games such as Red light and Greenlight which was introduced in the Squid Game and act as if they were shooting a gun whenever one of the friends made a mistake which shows that the students got more violent than in the past.

Since the problem has spread through the school, Korea International School has urgently sent letters to the parents to prohibit the Squid Game from the children. The school also set a morning meeting every morning and discussed the reason for not watching the Squid Game with the young students.

Mr. French knew that changing the whole society wasn’t easy, so he decided to remind the parents to give more attention to the kids. He suggested they be always beside the children whenever they were watching violent shows and always turn the parental control and when the kids were using the social media in case they could watch that were not inappropriate.

It’s not always easy to change the world but it is possible for parents to take care of their kids and change their future.

The article focuses on how the elementary students in KISJ are currently influenced due to the Squid Game, a Netflix series, and their changed behaviors compared to the past. Regarding the development of SNS and social media, a famous show like Squid Game became easily accessible to kids. Even though SNS and social media can foster a positive influence like social movements, they can also impact people in a negative way, especially young children since they quickly learn from what they watch. Therefore, this article not only notices that KISJ elementary students are negatively affected by Squid Game but also emphasizes the importance of appropriate usage of SNS and social media.