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We live in a world where internet appearance is beginning to dominate over common sense, and teens across the nation have recently had to deal with the consequences.
Videos circulating all over social media show teenagers biting into Tide pods, followed by coughing and spitting, and in some cases vomiting, to get the laundry detergent from their mouths.
Nobody really knows when this new internet sensation, dubbed “The Tide Pod Challenge,” came about, but what started as a playful meme morphed into a serious health hazard.
Tide Pods, obviously, are not meant for human digestion. All laundry detergents contain various chemical compounds, but laundry pods contain a far more concentrated liquid than regular cleaner, which means they’re even more harmful when consumed.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers reported 81 cases of tide pod exposure just since the beginning of the 2018 year, and 39 of those cases were teenagers who ate the pods intentionally.
Interestingly, tide pods and other laundry packets were developed as a means of keeping children from drinking the liquid detergent, but the outcome didn’t exactly meet the expectations.
Many children mistake the brightly colored Tide Pods for candy, and ingest the pods by mistake. Similarly, elderly people with dementia have confused the pods as edible sweets. As a result, in 2012 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention tagged the pods as a health risk.
In response to the dangers of the pods, Proctor and Gamble, the manufacturer of Tide, announced they would implement a bitter taste to the coating of the tide pods to discourage children from putting them in their mouths. Despite the company’s efforts, poison control centers nationwide have received close to 10,000 reports of children under the age of 5 being exposed to the pods, and eight deaths have been reported since the pods were tagged in 2012.
With the appealing colors, shape and smell of the tide pods, it’s understandable that children confuse them for snacks. However, the world was rightly shocked when videos of high schoolers popping the things in their mouths slathered the internet.
Things like the cinnamon challenge, the ice bucket challenge and the hot pepper challenge all experienced viral engulfment across the internet, but they were all essentially harmless. People participating in the Tide pod challenge risk serious chemical burns to the mouth, throat and chest; permanent esophageal damage; lung problems and a large list of other dangerous and potentially life threatening effects.
But in a culture where self fulfillment is determined by the amount of double-taps you get on Instagram, many teenagers favor online social growth over their own safety.
