Would you dare pour a bucket of ice water on yourself? And pinch your cheekbones for the camera until you get bruises? Would you lick toilet seats to show what you are capable of?

The presence on social networks of challenges or challenges that They encourage users to take certain risks and sharing images is so common minors are very familiar with it. This viral content combines two fundamental ingredients: entertainment and socialization.

Is about volatile and audiovisual content. They promote a form of entertainment that is only necessary to provide pleasure. This promotes a generally uncritical attitude that entails ignorance of its meaning or consequences.

Platforms such as TikTok They are particularly fruitful for this content. And their consumption patterns do not help with reflection either: the content is presented in a very short and dynamic way, the result of a well-trained algorithm.

When it comes to viral challenges, minors pay little attention to the context of the content they consume They will multiply and spread. It is common to hear them say that “it’s just a game” that is played in a group and that they include in their leisure activities. This was confirmed by a study among adolescents aged 11 to 17 in Spain.

Many viral challenges encourage replicating choreographies that become fashionable. For example, the one about symmetry invites the user to record himself with a filter that allows him to see the face with both sides completely equal. Or the plank challenge, where we had to do abs for 30 days, record them and share them.

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Not just entertainment

It is important to emphasize that the meaning of challenges is not always just entertainment. They can also be used in disinformation narratives, for purposes beyond recreational, a reality that minors are also unaware of.

The challenges are not a recent phenomenon. One of the most memorable and positive examples of this type of content is the Ice Bucket Challenge. The action encouraged people to throw a bucket of ice water over themselves, record it and share it on social networks. In addition to the record participation, many celebrities and hundreds of individuals have donated to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research.

However, when some of the minors who were aware of this challenge in the above study were asked if they knew why they poured a bucket of ice water over their heads, many responded that unaware of its origin or meaning. They simply saw it as an entertaining and trending action on the internet.

More risk, more spectacle, more ‘likes’

According to the research, there are two criteria based on which minors choose the challenges they participate in: how entertaining it is and to what extent it matches your skills and competencies. Excessive interest in the content that gains greater acceptance among their peers may push them to come up with alternative versions to climb the “level of difficulty” that they immediately associate with a higher number of views and ‘likes’.

To do this, they look for ingredients into which their contribution is converted something more original, colorful and impressive. And we can’t forget that the challenge is entertainment content about something that is extremely current and therefore ephemeral. This makes it difficult to respond to the danger posed by a specific challenge, which appears and disappears quickly.

But how can we make the challenges more noticeable? Boys and girls associate completing challenges – to a greater extent – ​​with some degree of danger, the price to gain followers and views. They consider risk as a necessary and justified element to make the content spectacular, which translates into a greater number of reproductions.

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In this context, Dangerous is synonymous with colorful and impressive. Minors tend to downplay risk in favor of spectacle and virality. In additionDanger, the challenge brings an extra level of improvement by proposing and innovating with more daring ideas that will increase participation.

Pressure not to be left out

Sometimes minors feel that there is a certain social pressure on them to take up the challenge of ‘not being left out’. It is common for some to nominate others on social networks to do the task challenge. This can strengthen the sense of belonging to a group, but also the need for external validation. In any case, it does little to slow reflection on the implications that carrying out and sharing the challenge may have.

Although this content is a hobby for minors, it is clear that it carries risks that they are not aware of. Moreover, there is no system to classify this type of content by age, which exists in other formats (video games, films, series…).

This makes your critical capacity crucial to confront these types of digital stories. To help them acquire this, it’s good to provoke conversations where they talk about the content they consume and share. In this framework, which is ideally reliable, arguments can be put forward that help them think. It is also necessary to talk to them about the consequences of adopting risky behavior. (JO)