Two girls aged eight and twelve, in Sicilywho disappear for 24 hours and are found in a shop: it was not a kidnapping (as was feared) but a so-called challenge, a challenge seen on YouTube which consisted of hiding in a business and spending the night there. TO Modenaa few days later, around fifty boys entered a supermarket, raided products, pushed customers and filmed everything: in this case too it seems it was a social challenge. And close to Praises a fifteen-year-old was electrocuted after climbing a pylon: a selfie taken from up there was found in his phone and among the hypotheses being examined by the Prosecutor’s Office there is also that of yet another “challenge”.
Schools start again and dangerous ordeals “explode” in the classroom: choking, drug binges, pranks to be shared via social media. Anyone who does not participate risks exclusion. Because this isn’t just a race for views, it’s a ritual of belonging.
The sounding board of collective emulation
«Emulation challenges are recurring phenomena, it is an anthropological constant», says a Panorama the pedagogist Michele Marangiteacher ateCampus University and author of the book AI, childhood and algorithms. Growing and learning in the post-digital world (Junior Editions). «We have always faced each other to demonstrate that we have the courage to do something that others wouldn’t do. The difference today is the sounding board that technologies give to these behaviors. Once upon a time everything remained within a group, a school: today if a challenge becomes trendy, emulation starts. “I want to do it too to feel part of the game”».
The risk is not necessarily the test itself: some can even be beneficial, just remember the first one we heard about, the “Ice bucket” of 2014, which consisted of dumping a bucket of ice water on your head. It was used to raise awareness and funds against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The problem is when digital amplification transforms a gesture into a model to be replicated without the young person watching it having the tools to understand what the consequences are.
The chemical game of popularity
Mattia (fictitious name) is 13 years old, lives in Milan and a few months ago, when he wasn’t even a teenager yet, he found himself and a classmate involved in a “game” that could have cost them their lives. Paracetamol-challenge: challenge born on social media, in which users must take as much paracetamol as possible to demonstrate that they can tolerate an increasing amount of the drug without feeling sick. All to gain recognition in the group of classmates. «My uncle is a doctor, and before it was too late I remembered what he always says, that all medicines can do a lot of harm if you use them wrong», the boy tells us. «So we stopped in time. The idea was to film ourselves and then publish everything on TikTok. It was the last days of seventh grade and we wanted to end the year with an action that would make us more popular.”
In truth, the paracetamol challenge is more likely to end up in the emergency room, if not worse. The phenomenon is so worrying that last May, theAifa (Italian Medicines Agency) has launched an alarm, drawing attention to the phenomena of “voluntary and overdose intake of this substance among adolescents, also documented by data from the Pavia poison control center». Moreover, very serious cases have already occurred in Europe: in Belgium and France about ten young people have been hospitalized this year.
The invisible threat of liver damage
“Doses higher than those recommended can cause serious liver damage, even when no obvious symptoms initially appear,” explains the professor George Constantinedirector of the emergency room of theIrccs Polyclinic of Milan. «Blood tests may also be normal at the beginning: alterations in liver function may appear after one or two days, together with general symptoms. If intoxication is recognized early we have an antidote, acetylcysteine, which can limit or prevent the damage. However, when liver failure has already established, in the most serious cases it may be necessary to have a transplant.”
TO Palermo – the same city where in 2021 a 10-year-old girl died after tightening a belt around her neck in a suffocation challenge called the “Black out challenge” – Alessia and Gaia (not their real names), fifteen-year-old high school students, tell us that the phenomenon is not paid attention to at all in schools. “We never talk about these things with teachers,” say the two girls, who attend different schools. “Sometimes the topic of cyber bullying is addressed, but in our opinion teachers barely know the phenomenon of online competitions, and therefore are not able to talk to us about it, prevent these actions and understand the warning signs.”
Beyond scrolling and algorithmic filters
Obviously, they recognize them all right. «My algorithm offers me very different contents, based on my interests», explains Alessia, showing a knowledge of the hidden mechanisms of social media that is much superior to that of many adults. «But despite this it has often happened to me, and it has also happened to my friends, to come across videos about an old challenge, called Blue Whale and which encourages self-harm. Or the (very dangerous, ed.) Chubby Bunny, which consists of stuffing as many marshmallows as possible into your mouth, pronouncing the phrase “Chubby Bunny” after each one, without chewing or swallowing. But I recognize the risks and therefore I shrug it off.”
Together with knowing how to recognize the consequences of one’s gestures, conscious shaking is one of the fundamental skills now required of children to overcome the challenge time unscathed. «These challenges have a characteristic that is very attractive to young people: they are produced by themselves, they arise from peers», says the professor Valentina Tobiaassociated in Developmental Psychology atVita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan. «The boy continually finds them in his feed, and precisely because of the excessive frequency he ends up perceiving them as something normal. For an adult, a challenge may immediately appear absurd or dangerous; for an adolescent who continually sees episodes of it, however, the perception of risk is lowered.”
The dark side hidden behind likes
Added to this is the fact that social media are designed to show above all positive feedback: likes, shares. «We don’t show what happens next, the real consequences», continues Tobia. «The emergency room, suspension from school, police intervention. Kids see the beauty, much less what’s on the other side. And so, even if they know in the abstract that a certain action is dangerous, they struggle to grasp the real risk.”
The debate is open on what parents, teachers, in short adults, can do. For Marangi the first answer is not online. «The most important protective factor is that the need to belong of the boy you find an answer even outside the virtual world”, he explains. It is therefore important to have real fulfilling relationships, friends capable of saying that something is dangerous or of intervening if they see someone doing it. «The peer group is a double-edged sword», continues the pedagogist. «If everyone does the same challenge it amplifies it, but if we compare ourselves it becomes a protection. And be careful: taking away kids’ phones is not the right solution.”
Adults with digital skillswho know what these phenomena are, where they are found and how they work, and who are able to open a dialogue. This means something that will sound strange to many parents: it would be better to spend a little less on social media to observe what others are doing, and a little more to understand what their children are watching. Not to become influencers out of time, but at least to know the world in which they are growing up.
