Personally, Gen-Z is excellent. Gen-Z is running towards a path of greatness, from dangerous challenges like the tide pods challenge to life-threatening challenges like the blue whale challenge. Truly. And while the delicious, non-edible delights of the tide pods challenge did not start this madness, it does seem to be the star that put these challenges at an all-time high.

While these viral trends from apps such as TikTok seem to be the culprit, nothing can stop young children from the fun of dangerous moronic challenges that can and will hurt them. If poison-coated Alcohol ethoxy sulfate, Denatonium benzoate, and fatty acid salts cannot stop them, then what can?

If the company behind tide pods must come out and write in bright, bold letters, do not eat this, then it is a good sign not to eat it. So what is it about dangerous challenges that call on children? The fame? Bragging rights? Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D., theorizes, “Kids feel powerful and immune to negative consequences. Their bursts of development across the teen years make them prone to impulsive behaviors. They are also susceptible to peer influence”. Sounds about right.

And like all kids caught doing dreadful things, children shrug their shoulders, proclaiming they thought it would be funny. Though not anyone has eaten these things, right? Wrong? Poison control officers say, “In the first 15 days of 2018, officials have responded to 39 cases of intentional exposure. Of those 39 cases, 91 percent were for ingestion”. You would think an adult would step in with so many children eating these.

Most kids that do this challenge are by some luck unscathed, but not all, though the eating of tide pods has concluded in hundreds of doctors and scientists writing to keep the tide pods out of the house until further notice. Or on a high self-till, your kids are old enough and tall enough to know better.

A radical idea would be to restrict age-restrict social media, but until that time comes, we will have to put up with these children and their equally horrible ideas and challenges that, for lack of better words, put a stain on all of us.