By Anna Harris

Trying to swallow cinnamon and choking, eating bananas and drinking Sprite so fast to the point of puking, rubbing salt and ice on your skin until it burns.

These are the risks people are willing to take, but what is the point?

Thomas Hart, a senior at High Point University, explains that it’s all for attention.

“I think it’s all about views,” said Hart. “It’s all about impressions. I think so many people do them simply because people like to watch others be miserable. And I think by watching these challenges they like, they share, they comment and by that, that leads to more views, and it just kind of is a viral effect from there.”

One platform in particular hits a wide range of followers for these trends: TikTok. One of the recent trends is kids shooting water-bead ammo at people. The trend even made its way to High Point University when a group of HPU students were reported to Student Life for shooting Nerf and Orbeez guns at other students in Village 1 and Village 2 housing.

Gianna Gravius, another senior at HPU, has friends that were affected by the situation.

“I have friends that were pulled up by a car of kids at a gas station and they started to get shot at,” said Gravius. “They were scared at first and then realized what they were.”

Some like to blame the social media platforms for causing this mayhem, but John Mims, an assistant professor of communications at HPU, believes the blame lies on the users.

“There have always been dangerous trends that middle school, high school, even college students do,” said Mims. “The difference is we are able to spread them more easily on TikTok now, because TikTok is the popular platform, not because TikTok is inherently evil. The next social media platform that younger kids are going to use hasn’t been developed yet. It’s going to have the same issue with dangerous trends.”

These dangerous Internet trends have always been a part of social media and most people think they’ll still be a vital part of it in the future.

“The trends themselves will definitely continue,” said Hart. “Hopefully, I say that I’m smart enough not to do them, but we’ll see how that goes down the line. The more and more that they grow and the more they go viral and the more impressions and likes they get, it’s just going to keep happening. Until there’s some true way to stop that, it’s just going to keep recurring.”

Regardless if dangerous trends remain the same, platforms have a responsibility to monitor these situations.

“If we expect platforms to shut down videos that might be offensive, you know, who’s making that decision?” said Mims. “By and large, we allow the marketplace of ideas to win the day and I think to me, the important thing for social media is to allow these ideas to make their way around the public and let us decide.”

Social media is a powerful tool that can be used for both good and evil. It is up to the user to decide how they want to use it and the platform’s decision for how they want it to be monitored.

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Anna Harris is a senior at High Point University majoring in Journalism with a double minor in Criminal Justice and Strategic Communication. For contact inquiries, please email aharris6@highpoint.edu.