What were you thinking? Parents of adolescents can unite around this phrase of exasperation. One common topic that elicits this phrase is often dangerous social media trends. Why on earth would a teen put themselves in danger just because someone on the internet did something crazy? Well it turns out that there are some very common answers to our questions.
Breakthrough Study
Fortune Magazine’s Kapil Chalil Madathil and Heidi Zinzow recently published an article exploring 4 reasons why teenagers do stupid, dangerous and sometimes deadly social media challenges. This engineering professor who specializes in understanding how humans interact with computers and a psychology professor with expertise in mental health, specifically traumatic stress and suicide interviewed dozens of high school and college students who had participated in social media challenges. They also analyzed 150 news reports, 60 public YouTube videos, over a thousand comments on those YouTube videos, and 150 Twitter posts – all of which were specifically about the blue whale challenge. This challenge, popularized in 2015 and 2016, was reported to involve progressively risky acts of self-harm that culminate in suicide.
Through their study, they identified four key factors that motivate young people to participate in a challenge: social pressure, the desire for attention, entertainment value and a phenomenon called the contagion effect. Below is a summary of their findings:
Social Pressure
Social pressure typically comes when a friend encourages another friend to do something, and the person believes they will achieve acceptance within a particular social group if they do it.
Seeking Attention
The attention-seeking behavior we observed among teens and young adults often led to participants innovating a more hazardous version of a challenge. This included enduring the associated risks longer than others.
Entertainment
Many young adults participated in these challenges for amusement and curiosity. Some were intrigued by the potential reactions from people who witnessed their performance.
Contagion Effect
Challenges, even those that are seemingly benign, can spread quickly across social media. This is due to the contagion effect, where behaviors, attitudes and ideas spread from person to person. How content creators depict these challenges on digital media platforms also contributes to the contagion effect by encouraging others to participate.
Possible Solutions?
Another interesting finding from the research were participants reactions after participating in these challenges. The researchers note that half of those who engaged in a risky challenge indicated that if they had understood the physical danger or potential risk to their social image, they might have opted not to do the challenge.
They conclude, “Based on our research, we believe that if more information about the potential risks of social media challenges was offered to students in schools, communicated to parents and shared on social media, it could help teens and young adults reflect and make informed decisions – and deter them from participating.”