Student Work

The “Benadryl challenge” and the “milk crate challenge” are two of the most dangerous trends on TikTok. Both of these challenges come with a high chance of injury and various health risks. Since the majority of users on TikTok are impressionable teenagers, it leads to a higher chance of users partaking in these dangerous challenges

TikTok is on many teenagers phones across the country. Photo by Solen Feyissa.

While the “milk carton challenge” has a slightly lower risk of injury due to some level of skill being involved, all participants have a high chance of risk. The “milk carton challenge” involves stacking milk cartons into a staircase formation going up and then down with the goal being to walk up and down the cartons without falling. Milk cartons are not very sturdy, which leads to a lot of the cartons falling as the participants are still on top of them. 

When the Washington Post reached out to Dr. Shawn Anthony, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai, said that the injuries he’s seen from the “milk carton challenges” reminded him of injuries he sees when people fall off ladders and in high speed skiing accidents. Injuries include shoulder, head, ACL and spinal injuries.

“I think it’s definitely the ugly side of TikTok cause I think TikTok can be so good for other reasons,” Carmel High School junior Nora Mariano said. “But those trends really promote just ignoring safety and they put kids at risk because they’re seeing that too.”

A reason why TikTok users may try these challenges might be the same reason as why extreme sports are so popular. Even though extreme sports such as snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing have high risk of danger, people still participate in them for the thrill of the danger, as stated by Giuseppe Musumeci in his paper published by Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

“But I do understand the appeal of like seeing like, oh can I do that or that looks really cool or just like wanting to try something a little bit dangerous,” Mariano said.

The “Benadryl challenge” has an even higher risk of injury than the “milk carton challenge”. Diphenhydramine, commonly known as the over-the-counter medicine Benadryl, is often used to treat allergies and colds. However, when taken in high doses, it can cause hallucinations. The “Benadryl challenge” is where you take a high enough dose to start having hallucinations. Doses high enough to cause hallucinations can also lead to serious heart problems, seizures, comas, and death. Multiple teens have either been admitted to the hospital or passed away while partaking in this trend, as reported by The Independent. 

“I think it’s taking me back to like, I think it was like 2013 when the ‘cinnamon challenge’ was a big thing and people were choking on cinnamon and thinking it was funny and whatnot,” HSJI counselor Diana Traas said. “And it’s kind of like history repeats itself where people are trying to harm themselves in turn to generate more comedy from themselves, which is kind of stupid in my opinion.”

These trends have caused the deaths of many young lives. As time continues on, dangerous trends similar to these will most likely continue to spring up. A way to prevent current and future teens from partaking in these challenges is to warn teenagers about this sort of thing

“You know, a lot of these teens are under the impression that they’re kind of immortal,” Traas said. “That even if they try to do these challenges it’s fine and then if they blow up it’s even better. Just because you get two million views on a video because you harmed yourself for funny ha ha moments. That’s not going to regenerate your life and make you live longer.”