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The last few years have been marked with many dangerous trends to baffle the older generations. Throwing boiling water on each other? Yep. Eating that kitchen cinnamon by the teaspoon or ladle? Yep. Salt and Ice on your arm to feel the burn? Yep. However, none of these have been as iconic and ridiculous as the Tide Pod Challenge. This challenge involved eating Tide Pods; that is about it.
Image features “someone eating a Tide Pod”, credit Google Images.
The challenge stemmed out of the nihilistic humor that is commonly associated with Generation Z. Between Y2K and the ending of the Mayan calendar in 2012 , Generation Z has been brought up on world-ending threats. That leads to the idea that the world is ending so who really cares what happens next? It’s “C’est la vie” to the darkest extent.
Additionally, it was brought to the internet’s attention that Tide Pods are brightly colored with a smooth squishy texture like candy. This most commonly confuses toddlers and those suffering from Alzheimer’s or Dementia but teens on the internet latched on to this idea and ran with it.
This is a Tide Pod. It kind of looks like candy.
Despite major news outlets making it seem like every teenager was popping Tide Pods, it was actually only about 37 American teenagers who reported having eaten Tide Pods during 2019. Of those 37, exactly zero were hospitalized. So, the world wide panic was a little bit excessive for this issue.
However, as 2019 comes to a close, it is worth mentioning one of our not-so-enlightened moments of the year. This challenge will go down in history as one of the stupidest, most dangerous over-reactions to ever be documented. Now, we wait to see what the big trend of 2020 will be…
I remember when this trend was big within the internet and differing news sources. I did not realize that such a low number of teens actually ate one of the tide pods. I guess like so many people throughout the country, I generalized the teen generation (including myself), for having some of the dumbest things that I have seen. It seems that even though only 37 teens reportedly participated, every young person was effected.