The Tide Pod Challenge

If you’ve been online at all recently then you’ve probably seen the new trend going around: Tide Pods. This trend has nothing to do with this object’s actual use; instead it’s from teenagers who have recently been jokingly calling them “forbidden fruit” and pretending to eat them. Some people are taking this too far, however, and are actually biting into them.

In the beginning, it started off as people joking around. Tide Pods sort of resembled candy and so it turned into a meme online of people talking about how much they wanted to eat them. They would take pictures that looked like they were actually about to eat them- there was even one especially popular Twitter post where a person actually baked some onto a pizza. These light-hearted posts quickly turned into concerning videos of people actually putting them into their mouths and then biting them. Though this is dangerous, there have been some false facts circulating online surrounding this issue.

You might’ve heard that there have been a fair amount of teens who have died because of this stunt. This is false. According to an article by CBS News, there have been at least ten deaths due to the ingestion of Tide Pods: two toddlers and eight seniors with dementia. None of these incidents have been linked to the newfound craze. Another thing you might’ve seen going around are the pictures of Tide Pods being locked up in stores with captions that lead the reader to believe that this is a step stores have had to take because of the “Tide Pod Challenge.” This is also incorrect. In an article by Bryan Menegus on Gizmodo, he details how stores have been doing this for a fair amount of time. Tide Pods and other detergent types have a high resale value and are in the top ten for most stolen items, so locking them up is actually just a way to deter theft.

Just because there has been misinformation spread about this trend does not mean that it still isn’t dangerous. Buzzfeed has written an article detailing what Tide Pods can do to your body. They wrote, “If you swallow the detergent, it can cause burns to the esophagus and stomach, as well as gastrointestinal distress.” This, of course, comes from actually swallowing any of the detergent. What is really the most likely thing to happen is that because people will usually inhale after they bite into the pods, which causes the detergent to get into the trachea and lungs. This can seriously irritate them.

There are a lot of challenges that go viral on the internet that involve hurting yourself but this is by far one of the worst. No, there have not been any reported cases of death caused by this trend, but it can still cause damage. We should all be safer and smarter before we just start following each other on these sort of crazy trends.

Works Cited

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tide-pod-challenge-ingesting-detergent-risks/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmodo.com/no-grocery-stores-arent-locking-up-tide-pods-because-o-

1822160273/amp

https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolinekee/do-not-eat-tide-pods-they-are-bad-for-you?utm_term=.mtxNWvpjq#.kv3lXDWMN

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5331006/tide-pod-challenge-eating-memes-safe/

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