Christian Jovel-Arias can鈥檛 wait for the latest kid fad to die.
The Dallas teacher鈥檚 5th graders started needling him when he uploaded a 67-page chapter book for a recent class assignment.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e like, 鈥楳r. Jovel, how many pages does this have?鈥欌�� he said with a groan. 鈥淚 just said, 鈥楴o. No.鈥欌赌�
It didn鈥檛 help. The classroom dissolved into shrieks of 鈥淪IX ... SEVEN!鈥�
The 鈥渟ix-seven鈥� shrug鈥攕o viral that it has been tapped as the 2025 Word of the Year by Dictionary.com鈥攊s the latest of the unending stream of jokes, rituals, and competitions that spread like wildfire among students in classes and on social media.
These activities often prove bewildering and annoying to teachers and parents, but experts say for the most part they are a normal and valuable part of children鈥檚 social development.
These collective activities help students to relieve stress, develop a sense of generational identity鈥攈ow many teachers still remember vaguely naughty ditties like 鈥淛ingle Bells, Batman Smells鈥�?鈥攁nd push back against the things in the adult world that they find strange and exasperating, too.
鈥淪tudents are always constructing their stories, their spaces ... and calling out adult inconsistencies,鈥� said Lisa Rathje, the executive director of Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education, a nonprofit that works with schools and museums. 鈥淩ight now potentially the absurdity of our moment is showing up in student games and rituals. ... There鈥檚 all this concern about what is true, what is authentic. In some ways it makes sense that they would lean into a joke that doesn鈥檛 mean anything.鈥�
Civil War-era songs (鈥淢iss Susie had a steamboat,鈥� etc.), Gen-Xers鈥� graffiti-filled notebooks, and yes, six-seven shrugs in 2025 all fall into a part of children鈥檚 culture known as childlore.
Childlore is a distinctive genre that includes all the games, rituals, stories, and other activities passed from child to child in playgrounds, classrooms, and now, in the 21st century, via social media.
This child culture is about 鈥減ower and language and shared practice,鈥� said Rebekah Willett, a professor of childhood and media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When adults respond to a new student catchphrase or song with confusion, 鈥渒ids are getting exactly what they want from it,鈥� Willett said. 鈥淚t gives them pleasure and power because adults don鈥檛 know what it means.鈥�
Annoying adults protects against adult interference, the reasoning goes.
鈥淧art of this is children鈥檚 search for privacy,鈥� said Anna Beresin, a folklorist and author of , an study of how child culture has evolved in schools. 鈥淭hey have so little of it that they鈥檙e trying to make a safe space to have hidden knowledge away from grown-ups.鈥�
Childlore鈥檚 spread, once gradual, explodes in the social media era
Childlore鈥檚 expansion into online forums and social media challenges has accelerated in recent years, both because the technology has become ubiquitous and because informal play spaces have become more structured and standardized鈥攁nd under adult eyes.
Ironically, children sharing with each other online has made it that much easier for childlore to be . Pizza Hut, for instance, offered 67-cent wings on Nov. 6-7 in response to the six-seven trend.
Children develop important social skills through navigating the unspoken rules and rituals of other children, above and beyond that learned through formal social-emotional education in school, Willett noted. Historically, that has happened during free and unstructured time鈥攁 dwindling resource for many students, she said. Restricting children鈥檚 ability to shape their own cultural practices can make it harder for them to develop social-emotional skills.
For example, hopscotch goes back to and is played in different versions around the world, but most modern playgrounds paint a permanent, standardized board rather than allowing students to draw their own, Rathje noted.
鈥淪o there鈥檚 less discussion about what your board looks like ... the bounds and the rules of that,鈥� she said.
While 糖心动漫vlog should stop student challenges that can be dangerous, experts say cracking down on harmless-but-annoying trends can do more harm than good.
During a 2015 after-school arts project, Beresin and her undergraduate researchers found students in South Philadelphia developed , all of which were outlawed at school, even during lunch.
Getting disciplined for pen-tapping didn鈥檛 stop them from doing it, but Beresin found students became less likely to tap in school once they had more time and avenues for acceptable music-making. The children created their own documentary of their pen-tapping rhythms and their connection to historic folk music in their community. Understanding their activity as part of their culture instead of only a disciplinary problem helped them focus on broader skills, she found.
鈥淪o much of the conversation [on student fads] is around deficits and troublemakers,鈥� Rathje said. 鈥淲hen you see these rituals emerge and sometimes fade as quickly as they come, they鈥檙e all feeding that same [student] need鈥攖o believe that they are participating in something greater than themselves.鈥�
For teachers trying to stay patient with some of the more annoying childlore, Beresin said it can be helpful to reminisce a little. When working with teachers, she often asks them for their own childlore. 鈥淎nd then all of these memories come flooding back, and the pranks that people did come flooding back, and the stories about their own search for privacy comes flooding back,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 really valuable, not so much in dialogue with children, but as a way to foster their own compassion through nostalgia.鈥�
Emily Box, a dance instructor at Mountain Valley Middle School near San Antonio, commiserates with Jovel-Arias鈥檚 dread of the numbers that shall not be named.
鈥淗aving to count 鈥�5, 6, 7, 8' every day is probably what keeps me up at night,鈥� she quipped.
But Box has decided to embrace the absurdity. She applauds her students鈥� chants and dances and has made her own .
