The internet has turned into a place to receive unhealthy validation. Different challenges become popular, and everyone wants to make a video about it. Eating Tide Pods is the worst one yet.
The “Cinnamon Challenge” became popular in 2012. The goal of the challenge is to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon. The challenge is impossible, and some people who tried the challenge inhaled cinnamon, which inflamed their lungs. The challenge put more than 20 children in the hospital and killed a 4-year-old boy. People were trying the challenge to get views on YouTube, even after news spread it was dangerous. 
A fake internet challenge emerged in 2013 when singer-songwriter Justin Bieber started smoking marijuana. On the popular site 4chan, users made up this challenge to make fun of Bieber fans. Members of the site made fake Twitter accounts and uploaded fake pictures of them cutting themselves with the hashtag, #Cut4Bieber. The “joke” was to cut their wrists, vowing to continue until Bieber stopped smoking. Some fans actually thought it was a real trend, but most people found out it was fake and thought it was disrespectful to joke about mental health and depression. The challenge spread fast and many people thought it was real. 
The “Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge” was inspired by television personality Kylie Jenner after she received lip injections. Fans would recreate her plump lips by putting a shot glass on their lips and sucking in. This caused their lips to swell to resemble lip injections. The suction caused some of the shot glasses to break and some people’s lips were aggressively bruised afterwards. Fans would upload videos on Twitter to get likes and retweets. 
People partake in these risky challenges to gain popularity on social media and become “viral.” Most recently, the “Tide Pod Challenge” took over the internet and is trending on Twitter. It started with a meme saying Tide Pods looked like yummy snacks and they wanted to try to eat them. This meme took a turn for the worse when children and teens — and even some adults — started to eat the laundry detergent. 
Two young children and six elderly people with dementia have died from ingesting the pods. No adolescent has died from the Tide Pod Challenge, but it only takes one attention-hungry teenager to take it too far. Acton Beale took the internet fad of planking too far when he fell off a seventh-floor balcony and died in May 2011.
People will do anything to get attention online, and these trends push the limits and sometimes result in death. This is something that needs to be changed in our society. We have become too focused on our reputation online, and it is only going to get worse. No rational person would eat a Tide Pod knowing they could die unless they knew thousands of people would be tuning in online.
This behavior is present on every social media platform. More people are on the internet than ever before. Almost 6.8 billion people own a phone, and 1.96 billion of those people are on social media. When someone posts something online, they know millions of people could see it and react to their post.
Ashlon Lusk is an 18-year-old mass communication freshman from Houston, Texas.