Mr. Webb: 0:00

Before you listen to today's episode, here's a word of caution. The content I'm discussing involves detailed descriptions of dangerous and potentially life threatening social media challenges, so, given the sensitive nature of these topics, this episode may not be suitable for impressionable children or younger audiences. I encourage parental guidance and discretion with this episode. If you're listening with young ones around, you might consider using headphones or saving this episode for later. Thank you. Welcome to The Conservative Classroom, where we're teaching the truth and preserving our values. I'm your host, Mr. Webb, and I'm glad you're here.

Mr. Webb: 0:50

This podcast is a haven for conservative educators, parents and patriots like you, who believe in the importance of free speech, traditional values and education without indoctrination. Each week, we dive into issues that are plaguing our education system and keeping you up at night. In each episode, we offer common sense ideas to improve education in our classrooms and communities. You may feel like you're the last conservative educator or parent, but I want you to know that you are not alone. By the way, if you like what you hear today, please share this podcast with a like-minded educator, parent or patriot. Together, we can teach the truth and preserve our values. In today's episode, we are not talking about anything political, however it could be the most important episode I've done so far. We're going to dig into the most dangerous social media challenges and trends that are harming our children and our students. It's crucial we shed light on these trends for the awareness and the safety of our children and students. Now let's get started. What caused me to want to do this episode is that just a few days before this recording, there was a local child who participated in a social media challenge that resulted in her being rushed to the hospital in pretty bad shape for a couple of days. So I'm not giving too many details because I'm not sure what those details are and I'm certainly not going to spread untruths, but regardless of what the facts are in that particular instance, this is a very important episode. So these are in no particular order, except I did try to put the most dangerous towards the end, but they're certainly not in a one, two, three order.

Mr. Webb: 3:14

So I'll start with planking. Some of these have been around a while, some of them are new, or at least new to me, and I got most of this information from a couple of articles. There are a lot of online articles you can find, but many are outdated and these challenges come and go so quickly. I wanted to find the most recent information that I could, so I'll put that in the show notes. Anyway, the first one is planking.

Mr. Webb: 3:46

So what started out as lying flat on various objects has escalated to dangerous heights, so to speak. What started as a fun trend, planking so that's where you lay flat. That's where you lay flat in odd locations. But when folks take that to rooftops and even a top light posts, then this can lead to injuries and death. I'm not sure there's any deaths yet caused by that, but I know there have been some injuries. It's a reminder that even the most innocent challenge can turn risky with so-called one-upmanship.

Mr. Webb: 4:30

Another challenge is the ice and salt challenge, and it might sound like child's play, but it has resulted in severe burns and it's a literal example of adding insult to injury. It combines ice and salt to create a reaction that burns the skin. And a lot of these challenges are challenges that are painful, but it's, and that makes it a challenge. And you know young people find it funny to do things that hurt, to show they can and they do dangerous things for laughs and for clicks and for views. Another in that vein is the hot pepper challenge and I'm sure at some point we have all taken part in something similar to this, even before social media. Here, try this hot chip, here try this hot pepper, or let's see if my friend over here can handle how spicy this is. So this is an old dare, but it's taken to new levels from habaneros and I'm probably pronouncing that wrong to ghost peppers. The challenge has sent people to the ER with severe reactions and it's just not about, it's not just about the spice, but the unforeseen medical emergencies like anaphylactic shock. So it can be funny, it can be fun, but it can also be very dangerous. Another one this is one I hadn't heard of Nyquil Chicken, the Nyquil Chicken Challenge. So apparently it's a challenge to cook chicken with Nyquil and obviously that poses some health risks because you're taking a medicine and cooking with it. But also the inhaling, the medicated fumes while it's cooking can be dangerous. So the first challenge is the swatting challenge.

Mr. Webb: 6:44

Now we're starting to get into some more dangerous challenges here, and most of our challenges is it's trying to get someone to do something dangerous, but in this case it's well. I'll just explain it. So it's a prank that involves people calling law enforcement falsely on innocent people. So that and it's it's a claim about you know something very dangerous. So law enforcement shows up and it's called swatting, because you picture swat teams. So law enforcement shows up and it's funny, but it could be lethal. Just imagine if someone, if a swat team or if law enforcement showed up on the scene, you know, busted in a house I'm using an extreme example busted in a house, somebody went to defend theirself and whether or not they actually had a firearm, if they posed a threat, or if law enforcement thought they posed a threat, especially in light of someone calling in that there's dangerous activities going on in this house, then someone that's trying to defend themselves, not having a clue, who just busted in the door, they could be killed by law enforcement and this people have been shot and bad things happen. I'll just put it that way. So that's swatting, the swatting challenge.

Mr. Webb: 8:29

Another is the bird box challenge, and my understanding is that is named after the film the bird box. So if you haven't seen the film I won't ruin it for you. But individuals blindfold themselves in the bird box movie. So the bird box challenge is where individuals blindfold themselves performing everyday tasks. Okay, so that's not too bad. You tie in your shoes walking through the house but, even more dangerous, crossing the road or, you know, walking down the street. People have even performed the bird box challenge.

Mr. Webb: 9:11

Now, keep in mind, this is blindfolded driving behind the wheel. They're blindfolded so that that obviously is very, very risky. And there's a trend with a lot of these is they could be innocent and funny if kept, you know, not to the dangerous level that some of these are, but that's a problem. Some of these challenges children, adolescents, teenagers, young adults try to take it to the next level and then it becomes dangerous. So the Bird Box Challenge very risky endeavor that's led to accidents and that, speaking of driving while blindfolded, the Cha-Cha Slide Driving Challenge so you guys have probably heard the the Cha-Cha Song or the Cha-Cha Slide. It's a dance, so the Cha-Cha Slide Driving Challenge involves drivers swerving their cars in time with these songs instructions. So obviously this is unpredictable and dangerous in a recipe for accidents, and this is one that doesn't just put the driver that's doing the challenge at risk, but you're putting pedestrians at risk, other drivers. Horrible, horrible idea. Sticking with the car theme car surfing. Car surfing takes dangerous to another level, with individuals riding on top of moving cars.

Mr. Webb: 11:02

Moving vehicles Could be SUV, truck, whatever, and this one has led to numerous fatalities, especially when it involves young people, and most of these do involve young people. I doubt there's many adults that want to to do some of these challenges, but it makes it especially bad for the young people because they, first of all, they're not great drivers yet. Even when they're driving normally, they don't always drive safely, and now they're playing a game where they're swerving their vehicle and I, in my opinion on this is one thing that makes this dangerous. There might not be other vehicles around, so they think it's safe, but you can lose control of a vehicle easily If the road conditions are bad, if the tires don't have great tread on them, if you're going at a higher rate of speed than you should. All of these things could cause an accident, and it's only worse when there's pedestrians or other vehicles involved.

Mr. Webb: 12:13

Here's another one that has to do with teenagers and driving, and it's the Kiki Challenge. So picture this teenagers jumping out of moving vehicles to dance alongside the vehicles. So it sounds like fun, but a lot of times the drivers are videoing their passenger, so you've got the driver not really paying attention to what's going on, and these are at low speeds, so I guess at least that's good. But imagine a driver, teenage driver at low speed, their passenger jumps out of the vehicle to do a dance and jump back in. They're watching. They're looking at that person through the screen on their phone. They're not watching the road. Anything could happen the car in front of them could stop, a child could run out, they could swerve over into incoming traffic.

Mr. Webb: 13:08

Horrible idea and this one you probably have seen videos over the last few years. I've seen on on YouTube or on Facebook where the actual drivers and this is horrible, this just gets worse where the actual drivers are going at a slow rate of speed and the passengers filming I guess the passengers filming and the driver actually gets out and tries to jump back in the vehicle. That's a horrible idea. I've seen videos where people get out and trip and fall. Now some people have actually got run over by themselves or somebody in another car. But I've also seen videos where the driver will get out and trip and fall and then gets up and can't catch their vehicle before it plows into the back of another vehicle or a tree or something like that. It's horrible, horrible idea.

Mr. Webb: 14:07

Now, stepping away from all the, the, the car challenges, there's the full face wax challenge. So the full face wax challenge involves applying wax over the entire face, including the eyes and nostrils. Now there are professionals who wax people's eyebrows, part of their face, ears, whatever people wax, I don't know, but they're professionals. So when, when folks do it, when young people do it teenagers, adolescents, children because they saw a social media challenge, it's not only a recipe for immediate injury but could lead to long term respiratory issues because they're putting the, the wax actually in their eyes and nostrils. Horrible idea, maybe not as dangerous as some of those car challenges, but dangerous nonetheless.

Mr. Webb: 15:10

Okay, the sunburn art challenge I hadn't heard of this one either. Sunburn art challenge as the name suggests, people create art via sunburn. So what happens is they go out in the sun, where you would normally get a sunburn, and they'll put some kind of pattern or picture on their arm or some part of their body, and so the sunburn will burn their skin and wherever this art is when you take it off, then that part is not sunburnt. So it's deceptive and it's danger, encouraging individuals to create patterns with sunburn. So you know, one time of this it just could cause, you know, minor. It could just be a minor. I had to say minor. I hate to say minor danger, but it's not as dangerous as some of the other challenges we talked about, but long-term consequence could be skin cancer or you know some. I would imagine there's some teenagers that stay out way too long for the silly challenge and end up with severe burns.

Mr. Webb: 16:36

Alright, let's switch over to, or switch gears to, the cinnamon challenge and the cinnamon challenge you have probably heard of or seen this, and it's where people are challenged to ingest cinnamon in powder form and a lot of times in these challenges people will cough and this, you know, the red puff of smoke looking thing will come out of their mouth and it's really funny. But people have actually got, you know this cinnamon powder in their lungs. It could lead to choking and lung damage and I would imagine the younger the person is that's doing this, the more dangerous this could be. So it's a example of how seemingly harmless kitchen spices can become hazards in the hands of adolescents and social media challenge participants. Okay, these, these last few we're getting into a little bit more dangerous territory.

Mr. Webb: 17:46

Most everyone has heard of the Tide Pod challenge and that's where Tide Pods I'm sure you know what that is. So Tide makes these pods, these laundry pods that you. It looks like they're wrapped in plastic, but the plastic disintegrates when it gets in water. So inside these, what looks like plastic containers is the laundry detergent, liquid laundry detergent. It's colorful, it looks cool and it's fine until folks start ingesting them. That's what the Tide Pod challenge is where teenagers will eat these Tide Pods. So they risk choking. For one thing and again I would imagine, the younger the person is, the higher the risk is for choking, but also poisoning. And despite many warnings, this challenge became a dangerous fad and it kind of shows the disconnect between online actions and their physical dangers, between folks watching something on social media and realizing how dangerous that is in real life.

Mr. Webb: 19:11

Here's one I would like to think I would have had enough sense not to do when I was a teenager or adolescent or child. But you know small children, they like to stick things where things don't go. And the outlet challenge involves dropping a coin, and I'm assuming it could be other objects, other metal objects, but it involves dropping a coin aren't onto a partially exposed prongs of a charger plugged into an outlet. So obviously that creates sparks, it's dangerous, that could be electrocuted and it could cause fires. So it goes against everything about electrical safety that kids have ever been taught, and I would assume that that leads not just putting a coin onto part of the prongs of a charger, but I would imagine that leads to actually just sticking metal objects into an outlet. I can see if it. If it has it, I'm sure it would have had that direction, so that one seems to me that's very dangerous.

Mr. Webb: 20:31

This one I could. I could totally see this next one. I could see my middle school students doing this next one and it's called the skull breaker challenge. Now, if the name doesn't tell you that it's dangerous, then one watching one video of someone doing this, you can see how dangerous it is. But it's a prank where two individuals kick the legs out from under a third individual and that obviously causes them to fall, fall back quickly on on their head most of the time and that's why it's called the skull breaker challenge. Now, in the grass or soft mud, this wouldn't be a huge deal, but when you do it on hardwood floors like a gym or in a classroom or on the concrete sidewalk, it is very dangerous, in the pain, horrifying, and I can't imagine also people that watch this video and think this is a good idea. But keep in mind, we're talking about children and teenagers who don't have the life experiences that we do, don't see the dangers in these social media challenges. This is the blackout challenge. The blackout challenge encourages children to strangle themselves, to self-strangulate, and obviously the worst outcome of this would be death, and this has happened. But even if a person doesn't die from it, they could still suffer from brain damage. So it's terrible. It's horrifying to think how far challenges can go, how far people will push these challenges just for clicks, just for some online clout or some TikTok clout.

Mr. Webb: 22:46

The Benadryl challenge I hadn't heard of this until recently and this has caused children to have long-term damage. It's caused seizures, it's caused death. And it's the Benadryl challenge. This one's scary. All these last few that I mentioned, and this one and the next, they're all very scary because they can lead to death. But with this one, someone is challenged to take a bunch of Benadryl and I'm not talking about two or three, I'm talking about 10 or 20 or 30. And it can cause death. If an adult is not around or a responsible person is not around, then this person is probably going to die if they take 10, 15, 20, 30 Benadryl. So the challenge is you take these Benadryl and it gives you some kind of high and, like I say, it's led to death. It's led to hospitalizations, permanent damage, seizures, and it's horrible, horrible. And finally, this may be the worst of all, is the blue whale challenge.

Mr. Webb: 24:18

This one starts out innocent enough. It's a series of tasks, basically. So and here I'm quoting from one of the articles that I got this information from and I'll put this in the show notes, but I couldn't word it any better than it is here the entire challenge lasts for 50 days and it first seems reasonably innocuous. Targets are asked to complete a series of tasks, one each day. However, the task become increasingly, increasingly degrading and then begin to involve self harm. Ultimately, as the final task, the targets are instructed to kill themselves, end quote. So that's horrible. And to think there's, to think there's kids out there who will go through with this sort of thing, that alone is disturbing. So it's disturbing that there's even a challenge out there. It's disturbing that it would make it onto social media and become popular. It's disturbing that children would do this horrible challenge.

Mr. Webb: 25:34

So I hope you've learned something today. I know I learned a lot in the research that I did for this podcast episode and, as I mentioned, this was sparked by something that happened here locally and I thought you know what it's important that parents and teachers know about these challenges. Now notice I said parents and teachers. A lot of my listeners are parents, a lot are teachers and a lot are, like myself, teacher parents. So teachers may overhear kids talking about these things, where the parents might not hear about it, because we're around these kids while they're around their friends every day. But until now, if someone said, if I heard someone say blue whale or skull breaker, I wouldn't know what they were talking about. But now if I hear some of these words, some of these phrases thrown out, I'll know, hey, that's a challenge, that's one of those social media challenges. A lot of these are TikTok challenges and some of them have crossed over into other social media, so I'm just calling them social media challenges.

Mr. Webb: 27:07

But it's our collective responsibility as parents, educators and adults in general to guide our children and our students to understand the gravity and the seriousness of their online actions. We, I'm sure, have talked about stranger danger and we've talked about drugs to our kids and our students. We've talked about bullying and we might have touched on cyber bullying, but have we told them about the dangers of social media challenges? If not, we need to. We need to foster environments where curiosity is met with wisdom and challenges are tackled with knowledge, not recklessness. Our kids will not have the same life experiences and the same wisdom that we do, but it's our job to impart that wisdom, to help our kids and keep them safe. And if you don't remember anything else about this episode, remember this that there are dangerous things that our kids and our students face. Let's not, let's not do, let's not wait, like I did, until someone locally ends up in the hospital to become aware of some social media challenge, but let's, let's try to be more proactive. Let's talk to our kids and our students about all the dangers of online, and that's our job as adults to help them.

Mr. Webb: 29:00

Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode of The Conservative Classroom. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something. If you liked what you heard, please don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Most importantly, share this podcast with a like-minded educator, parent or patriot. You can also connect with us on social media and share your thoughts on today's topic, give feedback on the podcast or suggest a topic by sending me an email at TheConservativeClassroom@gmail. com. We'd love to hear from you.

Mr. Webb: 29:41

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Mr. Webb: 30:15

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