Horror has been very popular among children despite the maturity of the genre recently. From the “Goosebumps” book franchise to recent horror games like “Five Nights At Freddy’s” horror is a genre that’s proved to be for all ages.

One benefit of horror is that it can help kids analyze and interpret frightening scenarios and develop their ability to anticipate and respond to danger in real-life situations. This can also help them come up with solutions to complex problems which the games usually excel at with their puzzles and difficult challenges.

Horror also has the ability to help kids and teenagers develop empathy by seeing characters in scary situations. This way of teaching is not as reliable as other methods of practicing empathy and children may not care about the characters in horror media.

Horror has been proven to work among kids through the “Goosebumps” book franchise which is very popular. These books respect horror as a franchise whilst being age appropriate. Furthermore, they can help younger audiences get into reading which is heavily needed nowadays with how tech-savvy children and teenagers are becoming.

With all this in mind, not all horror media should be shown to children. Many slasher films feature gratuitous scenes and horror media as a whole can be very gruesome with its imagery. Parents that are introducing their children to the genre should be wary of what horror movies or games they use as they could accidentally show their children something lewd or something too bloody.

At the end of the day, horror is a genre for all ages and it shouldn’t be restricted to a certain demographic like most genres.