Business

The 6-7 craze offered a brief window into the hidden world of children. Even more, it showed how much of social life happens online

Published

9 hours ago

January 9, 2026

In case you managed to miss it, 6-7 is a slang term – spoken aloud as “six seven” – accompanied by an arm gesture that mimics someone weighing something in their hands.

For the most part, adults responded with mild annoyance and confusion.

But as media scholars who study children’s culture, we didn’t view the meme with bewilderment or exasperation. Instead, we thought back to our own childhoods on three different continents – and all the secret languages we spoke.

There was Pig Latin. The cool “S” doodled on countless worksheets and bathroom stalls. Forming an L-shape with our thumb and index finger to insult someone. Remixing the words of hand-clapping games from previous generations.

6-7 is only the latest example of these long-standing practices – and though the gesture might not mean much to adults, it says a lot about children’s play, their social lives and their desire for power.

You can see this longing for power in classic play like spying on adults and in games like “king of the hill.”

Kids spend much of their days watched and controlled – and will jump at the chance to turn the tables. H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock via Getty Images

A typical school day involves a tight schedule of adult-directed activities; kids have little time or space for agency.

But during those in-between times when children are able to stealthily evade adult surveillance – on playgrounds, on the internet and even when stuck at home during the pandemic – children’s culture can thrive. In these spaces, they can make the rules. They set the terms. And if it confuses adults, all the better.

As 6-7 went viral, teachers complained that random outbursts by their students were interrupting their lessons. Some started avoiding asking any kind of question that might result in an answer of 67. The trend migrated from schools to sports arenas and restaurants: In-N-Out Burger ended up banning the number 67 from their ticket ordering system.

The meaninglessness of 6-7 made it easy to create a sense of inclusion and exclusion – and to annoy adults, who strained to decipher hidden meanings. In the U.S., siblings and friends dressed as the numbers 6-7 for Halloween. And in Australia, it was rumored that houses with 6-7 in their address were going for astronomical prices.

Remixing games and rhymes

Since before World War I, historians have documented children’s use of secret languages like “back slang,” which happens when words are phonetically spoken backwards. And nonsense words and phrases have long proliferated in children’s culture: Recent examples include “booyah,” “skibidi” and “talk to the hand.”

6-7 also coincides with a long history of children revising, adapting and remixing games and rhymes.

For example, in our three countries – the U.S., Australia and South Korea – we’ve encountered endless variations of the game of “tag.” Sometimes the chasers pretend to be the dementors from Harry Potter. Other times the chasers have pretended to be the COVID-19 virus. Or we’ll see them incorporate their immediate surroundings, like designating playground equipment as “home” or “safe.”

Similar games can spread among children around the world. In South Korea, “Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida” – which roughly translates to “The rose of Sharon has bloomed,” a reference to South Korea’s national flower – is similar to the game “Red Light, Green Light” in English-speaking countries. In the game “Hwang-ma!,” South Korean children in the early aughts shouted the word and playfully struck a peer upon seeing a rare, gold-colored car, a game similar to “Punch Buggy” and “Slug Bug” in the U.S. and Australia.

A group of young children play a game in a field on an autumn day.

Variations of ‘Red Light, Green Light’ exist around the world. Jarek Tuszyński/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Historically, children have reworked rhymes and clapping games to draw on popular culture of the day. “Georgie Best, Superstar,” sung to the tune of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” was a popular chant on U.K. playgrounds in the 1970s that celebrated the legendary soccer player George Best. And a variation of the clapping game “I went to a Chinese Restaurant” included the lyrics “My name is, Elvis Presley, girls are sexy, Sitting on the back seat, drinking Pepsi.”

Making space for children’s culture

One reason 6-7 became so popular is the low barrier to entry: Saying “6-7” and doing the accompanying hand movement is easy to pick up and translate into different cultural contexts. The simplicity of the meme allowed young Korean children to repeat the phrase in English. And deaf children have participated by signing the meme.

Because the social worlds of children now exist across a range of online spaces, 6-7 has been able to seamlessly spread and evolve. On the gaming platform Roblox, for example, children can create avatars that resemble 6-7 and play games that feature the numbers.

The strange words, nonsensical games and creative play of your childhood might seem ridiculous today. But there’s real value in these hidden worlds.

With or without access to the internet, children will continue to transform language and games to suit their needs – which, yes, includes getting under the skin of adults.

A great deal of attention is given to the omnipresence of digital technologies in children’s lives, but we think it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the way children are using these technologies to innovate and connect in ways both creative and mundane.

Rebekah Willett, Professor in the Information School, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Amanda Levido, Lecturer, Southern Cross University, and Hyeon-Seon Jeong, Professor of Digital Media Education, Gyeongin National University of Education

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Source link

Business

Trump calls for one-year cap on credit card rates at 10%

Published

30 minutes ago

January 10, 2026

Jace Porter

President Donald Trump on Friday called for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10%, effective Jan. 20, without specifying details.

“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration. AFFORDABILITY!” he wrote on social media.

It’s not clear whether credit card companies will respond to his call, or what actions he might take to force any change.

The post comes as the Trump administration intensifies efforts to demonstrate to voters that the president is addressing concerns about costs and prices that have emerged as a central issue in the November midterm elections.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to seek limits on the interest credit card companies can charge.

Hours before his message on Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, said on X: “Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates at 10% and stop Wall Street from getting away with murder. Instead, he deregulated big banks charging up to 30% interest on credit cards.”

In a letter last year to Sanders and Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, a group of banking trade groups painted a dire outcome for consumers if the government ever capped interest rates on credit cards at 10%, as the senators had proposed.

“Many consumers who currently rely on credit cards would be forced to turn elsewhere for short-term financing needs, including pawn shops, auto title lenders or worse — such as loan sharks, unregulated online lenders and the black market,” the group wrote.

The Bank Policy Institute said in a report last year that “while the proposed cap is a well-intentioned effort to reduce the high debt burden some households are facing, it would harm consumers’ access to card credit.” The group also said such a move could force card issuers to reduce cardholder benefits, including lucrative rewards tied to purchases.

Responding to Trump’s post on Friday, Hawley said on X: “Fantastic idea. Can’t wait to vote for this.”

Source link

Business

Asian households still save as much as half their wealth in cash. Fintech platforms like Syfe want to change that

Published

2 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Jace Porter

Growing up in India, Dhruv Arora’s mother gave him one key piece of financial advice: Put his money in the bank.

But Arora, now the founder of Singapore-based fintech platform Syfe, quickly realized that following his mother’s advice meant his money “did absolutely nothing.”

“We have quite a heavy culture of saving,” Arora says, citing Asia’s often unstable economic and policy history. But inflation and low interest rates end up eroding the value of household savings. “Over time, the $100 you put in the bank doesn’t become $101, but effectively $98” due to the effects of inflation.

Asian households sometimes keep as much as 50% of their net worth in cash, rather than in investments or assets. In contrast, in developed markets like the U.S. and Europe, that figure is closer to 15%.

But that conservative attitude in Asia is starting to change. Asians are getting wealthier, pushing them to explore different investment options. Strong stock market performance is also driving a new wave of retail investors across the Asia-Pacific.

“Asian households are slowly dipping their toes into stock markets,” HSBC economists wrote in a Jan. 9 report, though noted that “overall equity investment remains quite low.” The bank predicts that a steady shift from low-yield cash to higher-yield investments will mean “more money will continue to rotate into equity markets over the next few years,” reducing a reliance on foreign investors.

A slew of fintech apps have emerged in recent years to tap a growing interest in investing and wealth management among Asian users. These alternative finance platforms, such as Syfe, Stashaway and Endowus, often offer a range of investment options, ranging from cash management to managed portfolios and options trading. The challenge, Arora says, is how to “bridge the gap between holding money and growing wealth,” and “give more people the confidence to put their savings to work.”

Arora began his career as an investment banker for UBS in Hong Kong in 2008, soon after the Global Financial Crisis. Despite Asia’s relatively quick recovery, Arora noticed that the region’s professionals were building wealth yet didn’t know how to manage it. “These were smart people like doctors, lawyers and consultants, who were doing well professionally, but just did not know what to do with their money,” he says.

He launched Syfe in 2019, just a few months before another global crisis: The COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the pandemic ended up being an opportunity for fintech platforms like Syfe. “It acted as a catalyst for a shift in investor behavior,” Arora explained, as people suddenly had the time to engage with financial markets.

In the U.S., for example, people stuck at home began to get involved in stock trading through platforms like Robinhood. Fueled by social media, these retail investors began to heavily trade in so-called meme stocks like Gamestop and AMC.

Syfe has since expanded from its home market of Singapore to new Asia-Pacific economies like Australia and Hong Kong. The platform continues to grow both its userbase and company revenue, and the company claimed it reached profitability in Q4 2025. It’s now a “self-sustaining organization,” Arora says.

Syfe closed an $80 million Series C funding round last year, and is backed by major investors like NYC-based Valar Ventures and UK-based investment firm Unbound.

The platform’s users generated $2 billion worth of returns while saving $80 million in fees last year, according to the company.

Currently, Arora wants to deepen Syfe’s presence in its existing markets. Last year, the platform began to roll out bespoke offerings for its users, like private credit for accredited investors looking to diversify their portfolios on Syfe. Syfe will launch options trading in 2026.

Arora notes that many of Syfe’s users, over time, have grown more comfortable with taking larger investment risks, moving from putting their money in Syfe-managed portfolios, to more actively trading on brokerages and income portfolios.

Yet he eventually wants to bring Syfe to new markets in North Asia and the Middle East, which boast sizable populations of what Arora terms the “mass affluent,” a population with significant investable assets and higher-than-average incomes, though still not in the high-net-worth category.

“This demographic has historically been ‘stuck in the middle’: too large for basic retail banking, yet often underserved by traditional private banks,” he explains.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Source link

Business

Lawmakers and victims criticize new limits on Grok’s AI image as ‘insulting’ and ‘not effective’

Published

3 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Jace Porter

Elon Musk’s xAI has restricted its AI chatbot Grok’s image generation capabilities to paying subscribers only, following widespread condemnation over its use to create non-consensual sexualized images of real women and children.

“Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” Grok announced via X on Friday. The restriction means the vast majority of users can no longer access the feature. Paying, verified subscribers with credit card details on file can still do so, but theoretically they can be identified more easily if the function is misused.

However, experts, regulators, and victims say that the new restrictions aren’t a solution to the now widespread problem.

“The argument that providing user details and payment methods will help identify perpetrators also isn’t convincing, given how easy it is to provide false info and use temporary payment methods,” Henry Ajder, a UK-based deepfakes expert, told Fortune. “The logic here is also reactive: it is supposed to help identify offenders after content has been generated, but it doesn’t represent any alignment or meaningful limitations to the model itself.”

The UK government has called the move “insulting” to victims, in remarks reported by the BBC. The UK’s prime minister’s spokesperson told reporters on Friday that the change “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service.

“It is time for X to grip this issue; if another media company had billboards in town centers showing unlawful images, it would act immediately to take them down or face public backlash,” they said.

A representative for X said they were “looking into” the new restrictions. xAI responded with the automated message: “Legacy Media Lies.”

Over the past week real women have been targeted at scale with users manipulating photos to remove clothing, place subjects in bikinis, or position them in sexually explicit scenarios without their consent. Some victims reported feeling violated and disturbed by the trend, with many saying their reports to X went unanswered and images remained live on the platform.

Researchers said the scale at which Grok was producing and sharing images was unprecedented as, unlike other AI bots, Grok essentially has a built-in distribution system in the X platform.

One researcher, whose analysis was published by Bloomberg, estimated that X has become the most prolific site for deepfakes over the last week. Genevieve Oh, a social media and deepfake researcher who conducted a 24-hour analysis of images the @Grok account posted to X, found that the chatbot was producing roughly 6,700 sexually suggestive or nudifying images per hour. By comparison, the five other leading websites for sexualized deepfakes averaged 79 new AI undressing images hourly during the same period. Oh’s research also found that sexualized content dominated Grok’s output, accounting for 85% of all images the chatbot generated.

Ashley St. Clair, a conservative commentator and mother of one of Musk’s children, was among those affected by the images. St. Clair told Fortune that users were turning images on her X profile into explicit AI-generated photos of her, including some she said depicted her as a minor. After speaking out against the images and raising concerns about deepfakes on minors, St Clair also said X took away her verified, paying subscribers status without notifying her or refunding her for the $8 per month fee.

“Restricting it to the paid-only user shows that they’re going to double down on this, placing an undue burden on the victims to report to law enforcement and law enforcement to use their resources to track these people down,” Ashley St Clair said of the recent restrictions. “It’s also a money grab.”

St Clair told Fortune that many of the accounts targeting her were already verified users: “It’s not effective at all,” she said. “This is just in anticipation of more law enforcement inquiries regarding Grok image generation.”

Regulatory pressure

The move to limit Grok’s capabilities comes amid mounting pressure from regulators worldwide. In the U.K., Prime Minister Keir Starmer has indicated he is open to banning the platform entirely, describing the content as “disgraceful” and “disgusting.” Regulators in India, Malaysia, and France have also launched investigations or probes.

The European Commission on Thursday ordered X to preserve all internal documents and data related to Grok, stepping up its investigation into the platform’s content moderation practices after describing the spread of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes as “illegal,” “appalling,” and “disgusting.”

Experts say the new restrictions may not satisfy regulators’ concerns: “This approach is a blunt instrument that doesn’t address the root of the problem with Grok’s alignment and likely won’t cut it with regulators,” Ajder said. “Limiting functionality to paying users will not stop the generation of this content; a month’s subscription is not a robust solution.”

In the U.S., the situation is also likely to test existing laws, like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online providers from liability for content created by users. U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, Edward J. Markey, and Ben Ray Luján have issued a statement urging Apple and Google to “immediately remove the X and Grok apps from their app stores” following Grok’s alleged use for generating “nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children at scale.” The lawmakers called the images “disturbing and likely illegal,” and said the apps should remain unavailable until Musk addresses the concerns.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has also called for Grok to be blocked from generating “sexually explicit images of children and women, including prominent Muslim women.”

Riana Pfefferkorn of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence previously told Fortune that liability surrounding AI-generated images is murky. “We have this situation where for the first time, it is the platform itself that is at scale generating non-consensual pornography of adults and minors alike,” she said. “From a liability perspective as well as a PR perspective, the CSAM laws pose the biggest potential liability risk here.”

Musk has previously stated that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” However, it remains unclear how accounts will be held accountable.

Source link