YouTube Challenges Becoming a Serious Health Risk

Over the past decade, YouTube has become the most popular video-sharing website in the world. With hundreds of millions of people regularly checking what new videos are going viral, it is becoming easier for new trends to be made. For example, the Tide Pod challenge had quickly become the first YouTube challenge of 2018. These challenges have dated back to the early 2010s with challenges such as the Cinnamon Challenge being the new craze. But what makes most of these challenges a challenge is that it may be risky, or even dangerous. The most terrifying part of this is that in order to make these challenges stand out, they only get more and more unsafe.
For example, the Cinnamon Challenge was a challenge that dares people to take a spoonful of cinnamon—as much as deemed necessary—and attempting to swallow it without anything else to wash it down. It may sound like fun—even I tried it back when I was young and cringey—but it could cause some serious health problems, as, “cinnamon is composed of cellulose fibers that, if aspirated into the lungs, neither dissolve nor biodegrade,” according to Medscape.com. In large amounts, cinnamon can cause a dry mouth or throat, throat irritation, breathing difficulties, and in rare cases a collapsed lung. Fortunately, I was unsuccessful in my attempt.
Another challenge blowing up at around the same time was the Salt and Ice Challenge. In this challenge, a person takes some salt—again, the amount depends on how high risk they want to make it—and put it on their skin. Then, they take some ice and hold it onto that area of skin and see how long they can put up with the burning effects. When I mean burning, I do not just mean the pain. According to Daling McMoran with the Poison Control Center in an interview, “The salt and the ice mixture will actually remove the heat from the body… it’s absorbing the heat and it’s lowering the temperature causing anywhere from frostbite to second degree burns.” (q13fox.com). There have been instances where kids and teenagers were severely burned to the point where they needed serious medical attention.
The most recent example—and the most obviously stupid example—of this is the Tide Pod Challenge. I have no idea who thought it would be a great idea to eat plastic and laundry detergent for a five-minute-long video that had the possibility to be all for nothing. But unfortunately, it went viral, became one of the first memes of 2018, and had everybody eating Tide Pods. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Poison Control Center has been called over 12,000 times just from people who have eaten laundry pods. Tide Pods are so concentrated with laundry detergent that even the smallest amount will have one vomiting and have other serious problems. It has even gotten to the point where there are containers of Tide Pods that are sealed with metal and locked up. This challenge is the prime example of people doing things with no good purpose. I would very much rather get hundreds of thousands of views by doing something that will not endanger my health.
At the end of the day, these YouTube challenges are made up purely for entertainment, but at what cost. These are things that have been proven to kill people. I understand that there are challenges out there that aren’t completely dangerous, but it always seems to be the riskiest ones that get the most views and become the most popular. There are many more ways to become an internet sensation without trying to kill yourself on camera. To anyone who is reading this: please be safe.