Written by Nydia Ramos (Editor in Chief) and Sam Reeves (Online News Editor/Webmaster/Social Media Director)
There’s been a crime against today’s youth: the rapid spread of blatant stupidity and recklessness amongst teens. The culprit: social media.
Teens have always been known for their impulsivity and tendency to recklessly endanger themselves time and time again. But it is only now that we can observe a trend of monkey see monkey do behavior, world wide. Not only do dangerous internet challenges circulate weekly, but now there are social media influencers using their platforms on a daily basis to encourage wild and dangerous behavior. Oftentimes these influencers are aimed not just at teens, but children.
For example, Logan and Jake Paul: the world famous brothers known for all the things that most would never want to be known for. These siblings both use their Youtube and other social media accounts to post videos of their day-to-day lives. Reaching millions of children daily, they share clips of dangerous pranks, insensitive behavior, and all around god awful morals.
With influencers and internet celebrities come fun trends or daring challenges. People will do almost anything online these days in order to gain ‘clout.’ When influencers such as the Paul brothers post these kinds of videos, their younger audience often will attempt the challenges themselves in order to be seen cool like their favorite celebrity or influencer.
The internet has seen quite the share of dangerous challenges, and many of them have ended up putting teens and young children in the hospital. Let’s take the cinnamon challenge for example. This challenge entails someone trying to eat a spoonful of cinnamon in under 60 seconds. It took the internet by storm, and soon thousands of people were posting their attempts of trying to swallow down the spice. However, the more popular the challenge became, the more people ended up getting harmed. The challenge put teens in the hospital for collapsed lungs, and they even ended up on ventilators.
As mentioned before, teenagers and younger children often perform these ridiculous stunts in order to seem cool. But why is it so important to seem cool? Well, in this day and age, there is immense pressure to be the best of the best. With the internet being so prevalent in our day-to-day life, it is easy to feel obsolete when we can so easily access records of others performing above and beyond our own skill sets.
Seeing other people rise to fame creates an insecurity in ourselves, thus, we search out ways to fill that void. Whether it be by attempting risky challenges, or constantly posting the ‘glamorous’ moments of our life, we desperately seek out ways to stay relevant.
With this constant drive for relevancy, an additional problem has arisen with people romanticizing and faking mental health issues. Anxiety has now become a ‘cute’ and ‘quirky’ trend. Depression has become a way to gain comfort and attention. People throw around the term bipolar like it’s nothing.
Not only does this create confusion on how to determine if someone is actually suffering from a mental illness, it has created a dangerous situation for those who really are mentally ill. They are no longer taken seriously due to people romanticizing the concepts of mental health in order to gain attention. This makes health care and acceptance for serious mental health issues more difficult to come by.
The internet is truly an amazing project that humanity has created. Its resourcefulness will be known for generations to come, and the help it has given to those in need will surely never be forgotten. However, positives almost always come with negative aspects as well. The internet will also always be known for the harmfulness and foolishness it promotes.
Teenagers as a whole must learn to educate ourselves on what we post and say on the internet affect others and not just ourselves. Our actions and words are eternal once we publish them, so we must learn to think before we act. We were given an amazing tool to help create and form a better world, let’s not waste it by posting idiotic videos of ourselves choking on cinnamon.