Jen,
“You wouldn’t mess with it”... but you did as a kid, right? You might think you did, but a lot depends on how you went about it, and what you were trying to achieve at the time.
I had friends who at school did ouija sessions with a proper mid-20th century board made from planks from a coffin, a deconsecrated communion goblet, and they were using incantations from a 16th century grimoire that had to be requested four weeks in advance from the public library so it could be shipped down from the city.
THAT is messing about with the occult. THAT is sorcery. Because they really knew what they were doing and knew what they wanted to do, they were at great risk.
I agree it’s not completely safe even when it’s play-acting. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and in the same fashion, it’s possible for play-acting kids to actually invoke the supernatural by accident. But you’re more likely to see a kid pull a parallel park via a handbrake-turn on his first day in Drivers’ Ed after playing driving games for years.
Demons are real, but so are straw men. I don’t think they’re that bothered about kids playing around, for the same reason that the New Testament talks about children being innocent and, well, childish... sin isn’t about the action, it’s the rebellion that makes the difference.
Kids without boundaries (like most of the kids of today) are more likely to grow up to be hedonistic, nihilistic, self-obsessed, depressed, suicidal, anorexic/bulimic, and sex-obsessed - for one good reason.
The adults around them, encourage them to think that’s what the real world should be like.
When I was growing up, most kids didn’t cheek their teachers, or their parents, or the police; they didn’t swear in public; they didn’t think they had “rights” and knew less about sex than they knew about marriage... and they expected to have to work when they left school. Liberalism teaches them that the world owes them a living and they can do as they please.
The first time I was aware a kid could really shout at their parents and get away with it, was through watching soap operas and sitcoms from the United States and Australia in the 80s. Eventually, kids over here started assuming it must be okay, so they copied it.
Their behavior changed as a consequence of the society around them, reinforcing a bad idea as if it was both normal and realistic to believe in that idea. Society might not condemn Harry Potter, but it certainly doesn’t yet reinforce the idea that flying on a broomstick is “natural”.