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My kids were posing for a picture the other day when the older one, like big siblings since time immemorial, threw up a pair of bunny ears behind his little brother’s head.

Or so I thought.

“That’s not nice,” I told my older kid. He looked at me blankly.

“What?” he said. “It’s just a peace sign.”

I believe him. For at least a year, the peace sign has been my kid’s go-to photo pose. First day of school? Peace sign. Birthday party? Peace sign. Showing off the robot he made out of Legos? Peace sign, obviously. (By contrast, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen him do bunny ears, a common way for kids in my generation to lightly prank one another.)

It’s not just him. Every time his class takes a picture, it’s absolutely prickling with peace signs. An informal poll of kids and parents suggests the practice is widespread. “Everyone does it,” Rhodes, 5, told me. “I started doing it when I was in mid-to-late elementary school,” 17-year-old Allison said by email. Kate Ellen, a mom in the UK said her daughters, 9 and 5, and their friends all pose with the gesture.

The peace sign, or V-sign, is nearly a century old, and has been part of the American cultural lexicon for decades. But the gesture feels more ubiquitous now than in decades past, and it means something new to this generation of kids — even if that meaning is, sometimes, nothing at all.

The origin of the peace sign

The contemporary V-sign — two fingers, palm toward the viewer — originated during World War II as a symbol of victory over Nazism (the V-sign with the palm oriented toward the signer is an older, ruder gesture, whose origins are unclear). Later, in the 1960s, American activists began using it to signify opposition to the Vietnam War.

The repurposing of the gesture was part of a larger movement, said Julia Fell, curator of exhibits at the........

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