Dangerous, frightening and exciting, the challenge that recently spread through the “Tik Tok” platform in the past few days, entitled “Blackout”, in which a teenager strangles himself until he loses consciousness, to start a series of deaths among young people and adolescents attributed to participation in Deadly challenges on social media platforms.

A few days ago, a 12-year-old boy from Oklahoma died after participating in the Blackout Challenge.

In June, 9-year-old Laterius Smith Jr. was found dead in his bedroom, and in April 12-year-old Joshua Heilisos from Colorado was found dead in his bathroom.

All of them participated in the challenges of social media platforms.

At first, the challenges of the Internet spread on social media with the aim of encouraging participation in charitable work, then the reasons varied, some well-intentioned and others somewhat entertaining, but they became a threat to the lives of teenagers.

In 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge raised millions of dollars for ALS research.

But the Benadryl challenge, which emerged last year, encouraged people to take an excessive amount of the drug in an attempt to hallucinate.

The coronavirus challenge also spread last year, encouraging people to lick surfaces in public places.

Social networking challenges seem attractive and fun to teens, and a way to draw attention to their alleged bravery, to collect likes and hilarious comments, even if their lives are at risk.

"Children are by nature more susceptible to being influenced by their teenage peers, and social media has amplified these peer influence processes, becoming much more dangerous," Mitchell Bernstein, chief science officer for the American Psychological Association, told USA TODAY. than it was before.”

Teens can sometimes find these challenges amusing and exciting, especially when they don't see people being hurt, which increases the likelihood that they will participate.

Bernstein noted that adolescents are already less skilled than adults in assessing risk, and when their peers are praised through likes and comments, it can become an incentive to unconsciously risk their lives.

A Psychological Science study revealed that teens are more likely to like influencers on social media than those who have few likes, a finding that applies to neutral images and those depicting risky behavior.

According to the study, viewing pictures with many likes was associated with greater activity in parts of the brain related to imitation.

Jacqueline Nessie, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, says social media is unique in that it provides a public forum with a large audience, instant access to peers, and measurable like reactions, as well as loving, angry, and excited reactions. In addition to the comments, even if they are sometimes provocative.

There are 4 mechanisms that drive peer influence, Bernstein said:

  • Explicit peer pressure:

    "You'd better do this or I won't be your friend." Before social media, pressure was usually present only during face-to-face communication.

    Now, there is already a global audience of people who can offer that kind of flattery 24/7.

  • Deviance training:

    This occurs when teens get positive reinforcement for doing exciting things, which can often include breaking rules or engaging in dangerous behavior.

  • Miscalculation of standards:

    Adolescent brains are constantly trying to understand what is normal, and whether it fits in with the majority or not?

    And social media can complicate this, because if there are 20 posts in your newsfeed about the Corona Virus Challenge, you might think that everyone is doing the Corona Virus Challenge, even if there are already 20 people who have such bad judgment, according to Bernstein.

  • Identity reinforcement:

    In adolescence, our identities are influenced by good and bad peer feedback. If a friend participates on social media in a challenge and gets hundreds of likes, we like to emulate it.

Discussing the dangers of using social media with children is a challenge for parents today, because they were not exposed to these special pressures when they were children, and many parents understandably feel helpless.

But parents should fight this by devoting more time and energy to asking the children: "Show me, tell me, explain to me what that means? How do you feel when you see that?" To find out what children have in mind, and how they rate what they see on social media platforms.