A new social media craze is sweeping teens all over the world. The 48-hour challenge is making the rounds on Facebook these days and its setup is quite simple. In order to ‘win’, the teen needs to go missing for at least 2 days, upsetting their parents in the process of course. The game awards point to the teens every time their disappearance is mentioned on social media.
It's a copycat version of the ‘Game of 72’ which circulated in Western Europe several years ago, in which teens tried to go missing for up to 72 hours.
<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is sick.<br>"48 Hour Challenge" Game circulating on Facebook – encouraging kids to go missing! <a href="https://t.co/2AAXN5y2QR">pic.twitter.com/2AAXN5y2QR</a></p>— Araksya Karapetyan (@Araksya) <a href="https://twitter.com/Araksya/status/920652982517039107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Some parents are turning to Facebook to complain, asking them to immediately stop the trend.
Detective Lee Tuttle with CMPD’s Missing Persons Unit commented: “It's disturbing because it's something we take it so seriously and for someone to take it as a prank or a joke is very alarming. Tell them how serious what being missing is and how big a deal it really is because of the emotional and physical strain on families and then the resource strain on a police department such as ours.”
Social media, and Facebook, in particular, is a fertile ground for dumb trends and dangerous challenges to spread. Some examples of the idiotic things your kids could be getting into the duct tape challenge, the cinnamon challenge, and the salt and ice challenge.
The duct tape challenge: teens tape each other to posts. in one case a youngster suffered a crushed eye socket whilst injuring himself trying to break free.
The cinnamon challenge: people cough and splutter trying to eat a spoonful of cinnamon. Some videos might have looked funny, doctors warned that the caustic nature of the cinnamon could cause a collapsed lung and permanent throat damage.
The salt and ice challenge: teens challenged each other to hold salt and ice together in a closed fist. The winner is the one who could do it for the longest. Due to the extreme cold temperatures, second and third-degree burns were the result in some cases.
Source:
http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/new-social-media-game-encourages-teens-to-go-missing-for-2-days
We grew up without a phone in our hands and without internet. Different times.