Children and young adults have been video taping themselves doing dangerous and harmful things for years now in order to obtain their fifteen minutes of fame on YouTube. What parent will forget the deaths and injuries that occurred from things like "planking" or the Hanging Game. The latest in the YouTube video craze is "The Salt and Ice Challenge" which involves putting salt and ice on bare skin and seeing how long one can stand to keep it there. It mimics frostbite and can cause severe damage to the participant. Pictures of one Pittsburgh teen can be found in the AOL headlines. I will warn you, the pictures are not pretty, but the damage is most certainly permanent.
What can we do as parents to ensure that our children don't take the "Salt and Ice " Challenge, or attempt to get their fifteen minutes of fame in some other dangerous way? Sit down with them and talk about the dangers of these stunts. Show them the pictures of this boys back and talk about how much pain he will be in for a long time. Ask them if they can remember any of the "planker's" or hanging game victim's names who died trying to gain notoriety. Point out that they are not remembered or famous, they are just dead. Talk about other ways to gain the desired notoriety that are not dangerous: inventions, sports achievements, academic accomplishments,
I am really concerned that society, with all of it's "reality" shows, is pushing our children toward more and more dangerous activities with the prize being 15 minutes of fame. How many more children have to die before the social networks ban these dangerous videos? No outlet for these videos to go viral and I bet money on the number of injuries drops dramaticly.
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