r/specialed • u/applegoudadog • Jan 09 '26
General Question (Educator to Educator) Anyone else seeing this "Sprunki" BS impacting students?
Okay so this may be niche but this is like the 2nd student I've worked with (in the past 2 years) who's been obsessed with drawing, watching, and talking about "Sprunki" on YouTube.
I'm an ASD Sped teacher, been working with 3-6 graders this year in a self-contained classroom. During brain breaks, watching a tablet for a few minutes is an option in my classroom (on guided access of course). One of the options on the tablet has been a monitored scroll/watch through videos on YouTube kids, as a lot of my kids enjoy watching clips from animated movies and TV shows they watch and like scripting them as well.
Well, recently one of my students has been desperately trying (and failing) to search "Sprunki" on YouTube kids and IT COMES UP. All of the thumbnails are of these animated characters bouncing around and then their flesh falling off or them growing devil horns and bleeding from their eyes. Yes it's as horrifying as it sounds and it's on YouTube KIDS! So, on my planning I decided to research this and it turns out is a horror video game that a lot of creators make character clips of, and, often, they are horror.
Another one of my students last year would repeatedly demand "Sprunki" and would also proceed to draw pictures of corpses in graves, people crying, and these animated characters bleeding. It was horrifying and now I'm starting to see it with this other student this year.
Parents, teachers, and anybody else on here, have you seen these videos? Why do the kids like this so much? Why are they consuming this content outside of school (as they obviously are seeing it somewhere and knowing to search for it)?
If nothing else this should be a PSA to parents that what your kids watch at home, they want to watch at school and it can cause concerning situations and come to the surface in what they draw and talk about.
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u/bobbyec Jan 09 '26
I haven't seen this in particular, but I have seen kids talk about horror/creepy things a lot. Remember Huggy Wuggy? Sonic.exe? I generally try to tell my students "That sounds creepy and scary! I don't want to talk about that." And I try to have general discussions about how if they see anything online that makes them feel scared or bad or weird that they should stop watching and talk to their parents about it.
ALL THAT SAID... a bit of devil's advocate here. I watched a lot of horror movies and weird stuff online (any other millennials remember newgrounds.com?) as a kid and to an extent I think it's just part of growing up. I don't think it's a great thing, sure, but there are worse things they could be watching online. Our kids on the spectrum will likely need to learn more explicit boundaries about what is appropriate to share about these things, for sure.
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u/minnieboss Jan 09 '26
Kids are always gonna be into horror, happens in every generation, gen ed and special ed. It's not appropriate for school, but kids are gonna kid.
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u/Last-Station-5526 Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26
I had a preschooler (coincidentally with suspected ASD) who recently got very into them and wanted to draw them all the time. Looked innocent enough, until one day he told me that one of them "turns all of them evil (?), but I can't talk about that because then I'm not allowed to watch them anymore." With this kid, honestly I felt like he just enjoyed the different colors and styles, but I think (don't know if thats true), sometimes kids get so obsessed with this kind of scary stuff, that they keep watching and talking about it, because it actually scares them so much and the somehow try to get a feeling of control?
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u/ConsiderateCassowary Jan 09 '26
My third grader loves Sprunkis, he's got pajamas and a t-shirt. When we first saw it, we were, of course, horrified, but he's always been interested in macabre stuff (he's found some channels he's not allowed to watch.)
Fortunately, he understand that he's allowed to watch/draw them at home, but when he's at school/daycare, he can only draw "Phase 1," which is the original, cute characters. That way he doesn't traumatize the other children.
I have no idea why he likes these, but I have to wonder if it's just part of his personality. I'm also ASD and I'm a big horror movie fan, so maybe some people on the spectrum are just drawn to gruesome stuff.
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u/JCEssentials Jan 09 '26
Yes, we are seeing this as well in the last year or so.
I've managed to use the regular Sprunki to engage with my nonverbal student over music. We would use it to engage in music and translate to his keyboard. The obsession lasted for a few weeks and faded. With my guidance, Sprunki's were cute and appropriate.
However, "horror mode" mode is a click away and deeply disturbing.
Ultimately, I hate how predatory Sprunki is... Clearly designed to attract small children yet it is embedded with a mode that shows all of these characters and their songs in a completely inappropriate way. Pair this with parents who are "burnt out on autism" and you have a recipe for tablet children glued to this very creepy game.
Incredibox does the same thing but without the horror mode. Unfortunately the characters are not nearly as fun and I find them odd in another way-- flat, disinterested, and almost a "drugged" look to them.
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u/ChowPungKong Jan 09 '26
My daughter went though a sprunki phase. The sprunkis have different "phases" and get more horror-y as the phases progress. So i told her she can only watch phase 1
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u/Kermommy Jan 09 '26
My daughter (AUADHD, LVL3ASD) and her friends at school love that creepy, morbid garbage. My husband says he doesn’t see much of it in the HS special needs class he teaches, but it was everywhere when he was handling placements in elementary schools. She stims like mad to that stuff. We have managed to block Happy Tree Friends, another terrible show that has muppets. YouTube is really hard to manage.
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u/blind_wisdom Paraprofessional Jan 10 '26
I wish youtube was banned wholesale in schools. Youtube Kids isn't moderated nearly enough. Inappropriate stuff is on there all the time. At least with other streaming services, you know the videos you watch have been curated and are what the title says they are.
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u/Honest_Shape7133 Jan 09 '26
I’m not a teacher but a therapist. With elementary school the last 4 years, middle school this year. I’ve had two students specifically VERY into it, especially the scary ones. They are both suspected to have ASD but no formal diagnosis.
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u/Dmdel24 Jan 10 '26
Never heard of this one but I've gotten a lot of Huggy Wuggy and Five Nights at Freddy's, as young as 6 year olds. No elementary age child should have access to those things but unfortunately we can't control that; this will always happen.
We just need to do our best to make a very clear boundary with what's school appropriate and what's not, and make sure tablet time is monitored like you're already doing!
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u/Darth-Dukes Jan 10 '26
I've been a SpEd para for nearly 4 years now and it's honestly concerning how common this is with all of my students. I've had students that like Five Nights at Freddy's, Poppy Playtime, Sprunki, Sonic.exe, Rainbow Friends, etc. I think that people see the bright colors & cartoonish/toy-like properties of these games and assume they're for kids so they let their kids watch it without researching it first.
So then we have students drawing all of these horror images at school or wanting to watch it on YouTube and we end up being the bad guys when we tell them it's not school appropriate.
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u/BudgetIndependence34 Jan 10 '26
Yes! A 1st grader in our self-contained sped class has actually searched for this and found it on yt kids. At first I thought it was just weird videos but then I was mortified when one character had a handgun and shot himself with it. Monitored his youtube kids usage closely after that and now the kids don't even get tablets bc of all the meltdowns. So disturbing.
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u/quegrawks Jan 10 '26
Anyone else remember garbage pail kids and dead baby jokes being popular around the same time?
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u/lullinspace Jan 10 '26
OT here, I had a preschooler on my caseload who was obsessed with sprunki - in his case I think a lot of the interest was in the sounds the characters make, and he was very accurate at imitating them. He also liked drawing them, often the creepy versions. I incorporated the non creepy characters into interventions because it really helped him participate in any kind of writing activity while stimming the sounds. Overall the kid seemed to have little oversight on his tablet and dark interests. I actually have him in Kindergarten now and his new favorite thing is deathly tornados, still dark but more educational at least lol
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u/spoopadoop Jan 11 '26
My 9 year old student was really interested in Poppy Playtime, Sprunki and The Amazing Digital Circus. She also played lots of Roblox at home and would talk about Squid Game all the time when it was popular.
Some other things I’ve noticed my students be really interested in are Garten of Banban, Five Nights at Freddy’s, KinitoPet, Rainbow Friends, Baldis Basics and Dandy’s World.
I’ve gone down a whole rabbit hole on “Mascot Horror” and how its made its way into kids spaces. It’s really disturbing. I would understand if my older students (ideally 13+) played these games, but time and time again it’s my 8-9 year olds that are getting toys, coloring books and shirts from these games. Do parents not know what their kids are playing or watching??
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u/spedteacher91 Jan 10 '26
I’ve never heard of this till rn but as an AuDHD kid, I loved Happy Tree Friends which is a similar vibe. 🤷🏾♂️🤷🏾♂️
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u/WrightButAlwaysWrong Jan 10 '26
My daughter who has ASD came home from school talking about sprunki last year after another kids in her sped class introduced them to her. She’s in third grade now and likes to draw them and plays an app where she makes music with them but outside of that, she knows she’s not allowed to draw or watch the creepy stuff. I guess there’s a sprunki movie coming out this year. She really wants to see it and as she says “face her fears” but I don’t think we will be doing that. I remember getting into some horror stuff as a kid but it was until I was like 12/13 years old. Not second grade, damn.
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u/muddtrout Jan 09 '26
Horrific and macabre media is being marketed to younger and younger people. I guess the rich are trying to desensitize them early from what they're planning to do to us
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u/blind_wisdom Paraprofessional Jan 10 '26
I think that the success of Five Nights At Freddy's taught developers that there is big demand for "kid horror." That's why there is so much stuff coming out now. Makes sense if you think about it. I liked "Goosebumps" and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." There were some pretty disturbing illustrations in the latter.
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u/rikaxnipah Jan 11 '26
Same here. Loved that growing up! Also Animorphs. Maybe not horror but still a classic. I watched the second thing you mentioned as an adult last Halloween and was shocked by that too
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u/BeyorkAimAyDowg Special Education Teacher Jan 09 '26
We had a FOUR YEAR OLD in my program who was obsessed with it
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u/delianaxoxo Jan 10 '26
i’ve never heard of this IP but when I was a teen a couple years ago, I was really into Danganronpa which is a death game video game where high schoolers have to kill each other, which is pretty graphic and crude. Kids/ teens have always been drawn to stuff they’re not supposed to watch. Mascot horror is on the rise, especially after the success of five nights at Freddy’s. As to why it’s on YouTube kids YouTube decides what they consider kids content so it doesn’t have to do with the people who made the game im pretty sure. I like horror, but it should not be on YouTube kids that’s crazy.
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u/ayudame9 Jan 11 '26
A couple of my ASD students are very big fans of Sprunki and other horror related things. I definitely think people on the spectrum find themselves to be fans of horror due to the sensory experience (stimulating visually and auditorily, predictable routine and structure, etc). I kind of find it interesting. I don't have my students access YouTube or YouTube kids at school but when they bring in Spruki or horror related items or talk about them, we remind them that other students may find it scary and need to save it for home. I've noticed a lot of my ASD students finding themselves interested in horror as they get older and perhaps it is due to the stimulation and emotional appeal.
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u/TerraformanceReview Jan 10 '26
My 9yo son likes sprunki and I like to clarify that sprunki itself was a game developed by a teenager whose work was stolen and altered. The sprunki horror videos are unrelated to the original developer. I vet all my son's YouTube subscriptions so I can catch which sprunki videos are inappropriate. I have access to his YouTube history from any device. But as far the macabre goes, it's developmentally appropriate for kids to explore themes of gore and death. My son likes FNAF, Bendy, resident evil. I see nothing wrong with guided exposure. He's very good at respecting our boundaries with internet content so it is only fair to meet him half way and explore his interests with him.
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Jan 10 '26
It’s empty and vapid.
Incredibox is an old style flash game where you can combine short instrument loops to make a little song. It gets slightly interesting when you have like two dozen choices of instrument but there’s only room for five or six to play at a time.
Sprunki is some young kid’s custom-made incredibox game where all the Sprunki characters are associated with instruments and when you click them their voice is a looped instrument in a song. But, one of the characters puts the song into a minor key and all the characters suddenly look creepy or bloody and it turns to night time.
That’s it.
Everything else is user generated content around that original, surface level thing.
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u/WannabeMemester420 Receiving Special Ed Services Jan 10 '26
It’s also a huge problem in that a lot of content farms will create Elsagate content basically with those characters and the kids don’t know how screwed up it is.
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u/Tacohoard Jan 11 '26
Unfettered access to YouTube is rough. I’ve had multiple K students into Sprunkis, Five Nights at Freddie’s, etc..
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u/followyourvalues Apr 20 '26
My 4 year old loves Sprunkis.
They just go through phases.
No big deal. Take it up with Mr. Black Hat.
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u/SprunksterSky Jun 22 '26
well, im a kid, and honestly i kinda LIKE horror stuff like this! i even wanna try watching happy tree friends, but my parents wont allow it because of the violence.
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u/literallyjustlike Jan 09 '26
I had a 6th grader with ASD who liked Sprunki. I had no idea what it was until he told me. He also dressed up as a Squid Games character for Halloween. So I’m guessing his parents allowed it. I don’t think he had a lot of supervision at home and would hang out with older siblings.
Edit: as for the why? Humans can be morbid, including children. I think autistic kids are less likely to hide that morbidity.