The internet was built as a way to help everyone communicate. People could use this connectivity to share and spread information across the world. While the internet has done just that and made education easier, it has also helped spread some not so great things as well.
There is nothing preventing a person from putting whatever they want online, which means that the internet is filled with all kinds of misinformation and bad ideas. Sometimes the bad ideas are simply harmless pranks, but other times they can be truly dangerous. Who can forget the times when teens were thinking it was a good idea to eat Tide detergent pods, or to throw boiling water on unsuspecting people?
This caused endless amounts of worry for parents everywhere who were understandably concerned. Fortunately, those trends quickly died down, but another trend is causing worry amongst parents and law enforcement agencies alike. The 48-Hour Challenge is a new challenge going around on social media that parents need to warn their children about.
What Is the 48-Hour Challenge?
The 48-Hour Challenge encourages participants to disappear for 48 hours. The more likes, comments, and shares a person receives on social media due to the disappearance, the better they did at the challenge.
Any adult can see where this can quickly causes problems. The teen engages in dangerous activity, having to hide away where they cannot be found. This, in turn, causes the parents to worry uncontrollably about their child, which leads to police involvement. Once the police are involved, they are using valuable time and resources to locate the child.
Once the challenge is over and the child comes out of hiding, everyone is relieved to know he or she is safe, but they are also incredibly annoyed about the trouble that was caused. The adults realize all of the panic was caused by a stupid online challenge. This gets the child into monumental trouble, not only with their parents but with law enforcement as well.
Emergency personnel, especially police officers, never appreciate having their time wasted. This is why it is a crime to falsely report a crime. This isn’t what happens when a child fakes a disappearance, but it still wastes the officer’s time. That is valuable time that they could be using to help someone who truly needs assistance. That is why they do not take this challenge lightly and will likely press charges against any teen that participates in the challenge.
Parents Need to Talk Their Children
The best way to prevent any of this from happening is for the parent to talk to their child or teen about the dangers of participating in online challenges. Teens and children aren’t always the best at making good choices, which is largely due to their lack of life experience. They need to rely on people who have more experience than them.
Parents need to talk to their children and teach them how to make good decisions. Teach them that participating in online challenge like this is a bad idea and can be very dangerous. Hopefully by communicating with their child, a parent will be able to avoid any of the panic and worry that can come from something like the 48-Hour Challenge.
There Will Likely Always Be Dumb Internet Challenges
The internet is always coming up with bad challenges such as this. Luckily, parents can take some comfort in the fact that there is little to no evidence that any children or teens have actively participated in this challenge. However, it is not a bad idea to warn kids against it anyways. After all, it is better to be safe than sorry.
Challenges like this surface and resurface on the internet all of the time. It is a parent’s job to make sure that their child knows how to make good decisions and to avoid challenges such as this. By doing so, a parent can greatly reduce the chances of their child participating in whatever dumb challenge that the internet concocts next.