Romain Rouillard 5:13 p.m., February 14, 2023

For the past few days, a new trend has been born on TikTok.

Teenagers film themselves pinching their cheeks so that a linear redness appears on the skin.

A new fashionable challenge which does not present a major health hazard but whose traces can last for life.

Rarely lacking in imagination when it comes to inventing new challenges on TikTok, several teenagers have been engaged in a strange practice for the past few days on their favorite social network.

The concept is confusingly simple since it is simply a question of filming oneself while gripping a piece of the cheek with two fingers.

The idea is to perform a twist in order to reveal a redness on the skin, preferably linear.

@dineroosk Risposta a @NikOmok #fyp#fypシ♬ original sound - Not ouehda

A string of “tutorial”-style explanatory videos where we see young people proudly displaying their scars then swarmed the platform.

A challenge that is in line with other crazy ideas also born on TikTok.

These include the "blackout challenge" which consisted of holding your breath for as long as possible or the "Tranquilizer Challenge" where the goal is to stay awake as long as possible despite the ingestion of drugs with sedative effects.

The risk of spider angioma 

If these two challenges presented real risks for the health of adolescents, this is not the case with the “scar” game, wants to reassure dermatologist Marie Jourdan, member of the French Society of Dermatology.

With Europe 1, the doctor evokes on the other hand a threat on the aesthetic level.

"By dint of doing that, there is a risk of bursting and dilating the small blood vessels that are in the skin there. And instead of having redness for a few days, we will end up with a definitive redness”, she warns. 

>>

READ ALSO

- "Quoicoubeh", "apanyae" ... How teenagers create their own language on social networks

Concretely, these adolescents take the risk of seeing a spider angioma appear on their cheek, in other words a red spot consisting of a dilated central vessel, itself surrounded by capillaries (vessels of smaller sizes) also dilated and similar to legs. spider.

"When you're lucky, it goes away after two years but it can also stay much longer," says Doctor Jourdan.

And to clarify that depending on the type of skin, the task in question may have a different appearance.

“On matte skin, there may be a phenomenon of pigmentation with the sun. We will therefore have a task that is not red but brown”. 

Seeing for themselves the hidden defects of the challenge, many teenagers now share their regrets on TikTok.

However, there are solutions to remove these unsightly traces.

"We can use an electric needle which will destroy the dilated blood vessels. This is called electro-coagulation. We can also use the vascular laser which makes it possible to remove the small dead vessels", describes the dermatologist.