One of the beautiful and challenging responsibilities bestowed on anyone attempting to build a healthy community — regardless of the age of its members — is establishing norms that prescribe their interactions and behaviors.
At Hopscotch, a creative community where kids build and share their own games, we have been knee-deep in this undertaking for several months. A recent email from a concerned teacher prompted us to think about where we’ve landed:
Yikes! Delete Hopscotch? This suggestion was sufficient to make us wonder whether we should allow “bathroom content” in Hopscotch and, ultimately, taught us a lot more about our company and values:
We design for our users (kids!) above anyone else
We establish our own norms, rather than assume we’re obliged to someone else’s
We appreciate silliness, and don’t take ourselves too seriously
Last but not least, 💩 is okay.
How did we get here, to a place where we welcome poop? It started with a preponderance of poop projects in Hopscotch:
For the most part, we’d been allowing these projects to flourish. But, in light of this teacher’s email, did we need an Official Position on poop?
What’s the problem here?
We first wanted to understand where kids are coming from.
Kids enjoy making projects with poop because poop’s funny. This humor doesn’t come at anyone’s expense — it’s free of malicious intent to bring someone else down. (see: most adult jokes.) And it’s a natural and very basic fact from the first week of anyone’s life.
Whether this is appropriate for Hopscotch is more nuanced — “to whom is it (in)appropriate?” is a better question.
Many people use Hopscotch. Kids make Hopscotch projects. Adults make Hopscotch projects. Parents and teachers supervise children on Hopscotch. Each of these groups has different goals and assumptions, and each is accountable to a different audience. Unfortunately, we can’t optimize for everyone.
What do grownups think about poop? It stinks (most of the time).
While poop projects leave most kids doubled over laughing, the adult response is far more mixed; responses vary from amused…
…to indifferent (“Of course..”, “Not for me, but…”), to outright disapproval (see email above). Even our team was divided — we generally don’t get the joke, but are happy kids are happy.
In many (most?) circles in the developed world, what happens in a bathroom is private. Adults instill this mentality in children, shield them from bathroom-talk, and reprimand them when they engage in it.
Other adults don’t share this belief but are accountable to people who do. It’s their responsibility to uphold values prescribed by authorities — parents of their students, school administration — and prevent children from being exposed to bathroom-related stuff.
Our stance on poop will inevitably make some people happy and others unhappy. We would rather make a large group of people very happy than somewhat please everyone.
But, kids > grownups.
The thing is, while poop’s novelty may have worn off for us adults, ultimately, Hopscotch is built for kids. We prioritize their perspective above others and weigh it against what we think is best for them.
After considering the viewpoints articulated above, we decided that we don’t agree that bathroom stuff is unequivocally bad. Kids find it entertaining and, except in certain circumstances (read: poop on face), it doesn’t harm anyone physically or emotionally. It’s natural and often funny.
At the end of the day, we prize expression and restrict it only to prevent harm. So, if kids like poop and it’s not hurting anyone, we like poop.
You Do You.
It’s our prerogative as the builders of a unique community to create and update our own standards for it. By allowing poop in Hopscotch, we’re opening the door for new expression that has been restricted in other communities.
And, rather than telling those who disagree with our beliefs that they’re wrong or don’t belong, we can use this opportunity to educate them on our values.
By the end of this process, we’d reached a new, formalized stance on poop: It’s okay!
We realized that our position on bathroom stuff actually resonated with our company much more broadly than we had imagined.
“Poop is okay” reminds us that Hopscotch is being designed by and for kids. It tells us to act based on what’s best for this community, now, rather than based on pre-existing or pre-approved standards. It means that kids can use Hopscotch to build whatever they want. It means that we are building ourcompany according to our own specifications. Further, it means that it’s ok and important to be silly — to not take ourselves too seriously.
As we talked through it, we realized that all of these things were deeply important values of our company; so much so that we enshrined this phrase as one of Hopscotch’s Official Company Values. And because we want to meet our users where they are, we codified it in kids’ language 😜 😭.
