Old-school equivalents of the '6-7' craze explained

Academics say the 2025 '6-7' meme — a spoken phrase with a weighing-hand gesture that lacks a fixed meaning — is part of a long tradition of children's secret languages and is compared to older playground trends such as Pig Latin and the 'Cool S'.

The '6-7' craze emerged in 2025 as a spoken phrase said as 'six seven' and is usually accompanied by an arm gesture that looks like weighing something. It carried no clear meaning but produced many social media videos and led some schools to ban the phrase. A trio of academics from Australia, the US and South Korea wrote on The Conversation that this meme is the latest instance of children creating secret or coded ways of speaking and playing. They reflected on similar practices from past decades to show continuity in playground culture. What is known: - '6-7' is described as a slang term uttered with a distinctive hand movement and reported to have no clear semantic meaning. - The phrase spread widely on social media in 2025 and became common enough in some schools that educators took steps to restrict it. - The researchers named in the article are Rebekah Willett (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Amanda Levido (Southern Cross University) and Hyeon-Seon Jeong (Gyeongin National University of Education). - The team compared '6-7' to older examples of playful or secret language, including Pig Latin, the stylised 'Cool S' drawn in notebooks, the forehead 'L' gesture, and remixed hand-clapping rhymes. - The authors noted the meme’s low barrier to entry made it easy to adopt across cultural contexts and accessible to deaf children. Summary: Researchers say the craze reflects long-standing practices of children creating playful, coded ways to communicate and adapt games or symbols to their social worlds. Undetermined at this time.