What You Need To Know About The Social Media Challenge That’s Sending Teens To The ER
Over the past few years, social media challenges are becoming very popular among teenagers. The easy availability of the internet, as well as technical gadgets, has played a significant role in popularizing them. Teenagers and the general youth take part for various reasons, most of them fueled by peer pressure.
They include doing difficult, dangerous and reckless things to become famous and impress their friends. Such challenges quickly go viral days after being invented, and in no time at all, teenagers all over the world are trying them and posting about them.
One of the saddest and dangerous challenges ever is the salt and ice challenge. It involves sprinkling some salt on a body part directly to the skin then placing some ice on top of it. The salt cools the ice to remarkable temperatures, sometimes down to 1 degree Fahrenheit.
This causes the skin to burn, and the challenge is in persevering the pain for as long as possible. Sadly, the longer the ice and salt stay on the skin, the worse the burns become.
While you are wondering why anyone would want to put themselves through so much pain, millions of kids out there are still ‘accepting’ this challenge. Sadly, it is only getting more popular despite the numerous reports of injured teenagers in the hospital. Some have sustained up third-degree burns and have had to spend many days in the hospitals nursing their wounds.
Death has even been reported when teenagers poured salt all over themselves and covered themselves with ice or snow. Others have sustained painful sores on their skin, some which leave behind marks and scars.
Peer pressure has been at play for many years. Teenagers have been forced by their friends to do the most reckless of things just to impress them and get a spot in the social circles. This, however, is unacceptable. It is important to know that you do not need to do harmful things to yourself to keep your friends.
There are many other ways to be popular among your peers and even on social media without necessarily having to do burn yourself up with salt and ice. You may win by bearing the pain for the longest time, but you will also be the biggest loser.
That said, parents are encouraged by authorities to watch over what their children do. They could monitor what they do on social media once in a while (despite the persistent complaints about invasion of privacy) to ensure that such events do not take place. Better still, they could educate their children on the dangers of the challenge, and how peer pressure could lead them to do such awful things.
There are other challenges still circulating on social media, especially on YouTube and Instagram, that are equally or even more dangerous. Such include the fire challenge where teenagers set themselves ablaze then put it off immediately. This is perhaps the craziest and try as much as you could, you would never understand why anyone would willingly set themselves on fire.
There have been numerous casualties admitted in hospitals; some burnt beyond recognition and others even dead. We should love ourselves enough to reject any challenges that require us to pose anybody or even mental harm on ourselves and others.
