Article By Dan Elliott; illustration by Vanessa Poirier

With the advent of social media, people all across the globe have been competing for a currency long sought after by young and old, male and female: attention. In the pursuit of fame, be it in the form of likes, thumbs up or page views, content creators have shown us that there is no distance too far to go in order to be the proverbial “cool kid” of the school, where the school is the entire globe itself.

Cinnamon. ALS Ice Bucket. Ghost peppers. There has certainly never been a shortage of ideas or objects of inspiration to promote a virus-like internet craze, compelling people to do what would seem bizarre or even ludicrous to the average human being, all for the sake of attention and social acceptance. Some challenges are noble in cause, spreading awareness of issues that as a community should be addressed, such as the ALS Ice Bucket challenge, which sought to promote increased knowledge of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a rare disease affecting the muscles in about 2 out of 100,000 people per year. Conversely, there are other challenges that are less altruistic, such as the salt-and-ice challenge, where a person pours salt on their skin followed by rubbing ice on the skin. This cooling reaction produces effects similar to frostbite, leaving effects that persist even after the challenge, unbeknownst to the participant.

This year, however, has seen the rise in a new and far more dangerous internet phenomenon that is currently affecting the younger generation: the Tide Pod Challenge. The challenge sees individuals consume the pods, which are packets filled with laundry detergent, and film the experience. Some have even attempted to prepare the liquid chemicals much like a meal, boiling and frying them. A popular image across social media even depicts the baking of a pizza with the only toppings being the pods. It has gone viral, with a slew of internet memes and lengthy commentaries being wrote about the sensation.

What sets this apart from other challenges and crazes that came before it is the serious health risks that come from ingesting laundry detergent. In 2017, nearly 13,000 cases of exposure to pods were reported, mostly from younger children. As we progress into the new year, the age demographic has risen to teenagers and younger adults. There have already been 37 confirmed cases of intentional laundry-pod ingestion, mostly from young adults. Ingesting the pods results in a myriad of health problems, ranging from diarrhea to respiratory distress, and even the risk of death.

As long as human beings have been creating tools to make our lives better, there have been those who have misused them, to disastrous results. YouTube and Facebook, where many users having been posting Tide Pod Challenge videos, have flagged the content as illegal and have been making strides to remove the videos completely from their respective sites. Tide, the company that produces the detergent pods, has recently taken to twitter, posting “What should Tide Pods be used for? DOING LAUNDRY. Nothing else.”
As the new year begins, we have a chance to escape our past mistakes and revel in the prospect of a successful and exciting 2018. But this can only be done if we can learn from our errors and, perhaps most difficult of all, break the cycle of competition among ourselves for fame and popularity. Until then, we will continue to hear of tragic — and senseless — casualties from things as innocuous as laundry detergent.