Stay alert to dangerous teen trends
Posted: November 4, 2016
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Teen dares have gotten more dangerous than swallowing a live goldfish.[/caption]
Editor's note: This post has been updated with information about the Tide pod challenge.
In the old days, kids challenged each other to swallow live goldfish.
Today's teens have gone a few steps further, filming themselves trying these and other risky activities:
- Pass-out or choking challenge
- Cinnamon challenge (eating a spoonful of cinnamon without drinking water)
- Condom snorting challenge
- Ingesting alcohol in nontraditional ways, including vodka-soaked tampons, vodka eyeballing and alcohol enemas (teens call it "butt chugging")
- Salt and ice challenge (pouring salt on wet skin and holding an ice cube over the area)
- Beezin' (applying Burt's Bees lip balm to the eyelids to intensify a high)
- Deodorant challenge (spraying aerosol deodorant on the skin for a long time at close range)
- Tide pod challenge
Tide pod challenge
Detergent pods have been on the radar for parents because their coloring looks like candy to young children. Since 2012, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has reported eight deaths of children five or younger from ingesting the packets. More recently, eating or biting into Tide pods has become a YouTube challenge among teens. Tide pods are filled with chemicals to remove dirt, grime, grease, fats and blood out of fabric and clothes, including alcohol, dematomium (cousin to ammonia), fatty acids, amylase, subtilisin and mananase (an enzyme that breaks down grease and fat). If ingested or exposed to skin, detergent pods can cause several medical issues like erosive burns to tissue, breathing problems from aerosolized particles, nausea, vomiting and gastritis, which are chemical burns in the stomach. Inhaling some of these products can lead to fluid in the lungs with loss of surfactant, which keeps small air sacks (alveoli) open, and decrease oxygen exchange across the blood air membranes, causing chemical pneumonia. "These are clearly toxic agents," said Dr. James Meyer, an adolescent medicine physician at Marshfield Clinic. "Teens should not be coaxed to try or be bored enough that they should want to take risks of health consequences. We want teens to grow up healthy and happy and not cave in to the brief exhilaration of a risky fad that could have some serious life-long consequences."Dangerous decisions based in biology
Dangerous teen trends are mind boggling to adults but don't seem that risky to the youths who try them, Dr. Meyer said. There's a scientific reason why some teens don't say no to eating a Tide pod or spoonful of cinnamon even though logic tells adults it's a bad idea. The thrill-seeking parts of the brain are more active in adolescents and the judgment and self-regulation part isn't fully developed, Meyer said. Judgment is impaired when people are sleep deprived, as teens often are. Youths aren't able to weigh pros and cons as well as adults and are more likely to do dangerous things. Even if they see a situation is risky, teens often believe they won't get hurt. On top of all that, teens want to be accepted and remembered by peers, even if it's for doing something negative or dangerous.Teens who have poor impulse control or self-image are easily influenced by their peers and can get involved in a cycle of one-upping their friends by doing something more outrageous," Meyer said.