{"id":3711,"date":"2023-05-25T10:11:07","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T10:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/how-to-keep-your-teen-safe-from-dangerous-social-media-challenges"},"modified":"2023-05-25T10:11:07","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T10:11:07","slug":"how-to-keep-your-teen-safe-from-dangerous-social-media-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/how-to-keep-your-teen-safe-from-dangerous-social-media-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"How to keep your teen safe from dangerous social media challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Viral social media trends started innocently enough. In the early 2010s, there was&nbsp;planking, the \u201cHarlem Shake\u201d dance,&nbsp;and lip-syncing to Carly Rae Jepsen\u2019s summer anthem \u201cCall Me Maybe.\u201d Then came the&nbsp;ice bucket challenge, which raised&nbsp;an estimated US$115 million&nbsp;for ALS research. In recent years, social media challenges have grown more popular \u2013 and more dangerous, leading to&nbsp;serious injuries&nbsp;and even&nbsp;deaths. It\u2019s not hard to see why. The&nbsp;milk crate challenge&nbsp;dares people to walk or run across a loosely stacked pyramid of milk crates, the&nbsp;Tide pod challenge&nbsp;involves eating laundry detergent pods, and the&nbsp;Benadryl challenge&nbsp;encourages taking six or more doses of over-the-counter allergy medication all at once. Read news coverage based on evidence, not tweets As clinical psychology researchers, we study&nbsp;why social media challenges&nbsp;are so appealing to teens&nbsp;despite the dangers they pose, and steps parents can take to protect their kids. The appeal of viral stunts Image: Pexels Almost all American teens&nbsp;today have access to a smartphone and actively use multiple social media platforms \u2013 with YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat being&nbsp;the most popular&nbsp;among this age group. Meanwhile, the teenage years are linked to an&nbsp;increase in risk-taking. The human brain isn\u2019t fully developed until&nbsp;a person reaches their mid-20s, and the parts of the brain that relate to reward and doing what feels good develop more quickly than areas linked to decision-making. As a result, teens are more likely to act impulsively and risk physical injury to gain popularity. Teens are also particularly vulnerable to social pressure. A 2016 study found that teens were&nbsp;more likely to \u201clike\u201d&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/knowtechie.com\/how-to-keep-your-teen-safe-from-dangerous-social-media-challenges\/\">How to keep your teen safe from dangerous social media challenges<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Viral social media trends started innocently enough. In the early 2010s, there was&nbsp;planking, the \u201cHarlem Shake\u201d dance,&nbsp;and lip-syncing to Carly Rae Jepsen\u2019s summer anthem \u201cCall Me Maybe.\u201d Then came the&nbsp;ice&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[300,2809,63,151,18,396,42,2262,37,2754,12,295,638],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godefy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}