By: Annie Yang
These past few years, the Internet has been filled with “memes” and “challenges” on social media. Some challenges are fun and for a good cause, such as the mannequin challenge and the ALS ice bucket challenge, but majority of the other challenges are considered fairly harmful and dangerous toward our bodies. Doing these viral challenges often leaves many questioning humanity. Here are a few examples of the harmful and viral challenges that can be found online:
- The Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge: A challenge where people suck on a glass bottle to obtain fuller lips. Cases shown the glass bottle has broken down in the middle of the challenge and cut the person’s lip, leading them to get stitches.
- The Warhead Challenge: A challenge where a person tries to eat 150 warheads (sour candy) in 10 minutes. The challenge leaves a numb tongue with no taste buds and sometimes even a bloody tongue.
- The Cinnamon Challenge: A challenge where a person tries to swallow a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in under a minute without drinking any substances. Many cases show accidental inhalation of the cinnamon which leads to damage in the lungs, cause inflammation, and infection.
- The Salt and Ice Challenge: A challenge where a person puts ice on their skin and then puts salt on top of it and sees how long they can stand the extreme, burning feeling. This has a possibility of leading to frostbite and major injuries of the skin.
- The Ghost Pepper Challenge: A challenge where a person tries to eat a whole Ghost Pepper or Carolina Reaper without any other substances. This challenge most times leads to hallucinations, vomiting, and diarrhea.
- Fire Challenge: A challenge where a person sprays flammable liquid and lights themselves on fire… this is pretty self explanatory.
All these challenges are done on social media for more views and popularity. Challenges can be a fun way to get people more involved in what’s trending. However, challenges that are dangerous, such as the examples listed above, are questionable and leave some wondering why fame is wanted more over health.
