Silly Dares

[Canary42]

I'm sure we all remember as kids being subject to silly dares, and often we fell for it to gain kudos (or street cred as it is now known).

But we usually had the safety valve of other kids present to "rescue" us from any dangerous misfortune.

The internet has changed all that - now kids do it at home in their rooms unobserved except perhaps as a selfie. This can have dangerous consequences as illustrated by this case --- a boy trying the "Choking Challenge" trick is now unlikely to survive. The article also refers to the "lick the lavatory" dare. It's all so very dangerous to vulnerable children.

82 deaths were recorded by 2008 from the "Choking Challenge". How can we police the internet to prevent such cases ?

[Canary42]

Here's the link

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/boy-12-extremely-unlikely-survive-003823040.html

[Buenchico]

From your reference to 'this article', it appears that you've omitted the link that you intended to post, Canary42.

[Buenchico]

Sorry! Crossed posts!

[DTCwordfan]

Climbing trees - a mate of mine, aged 11, fell about fifteen feet high up an elm, I think it was as to species. Fortunately, he caught a branch on the way down.

No different to adults though. I was working in my (corner) office in Hong Kong, 16th floor of a 17 floor building, bamboo scaffolding having been put on to it so as to screen the windows with a reflective sheet to reduce the impact of the sun. Looked up to see this Chinese guy falling past the window - he managed to grab onto the bamboo on the 9th floor....a close thing indeed.

[bluemoon1]

I don't know about the internet changing things, I'm in my sixties and there was a craze going round our school where someone would take very deep breaths and then somebody would give them a bear hug until they fainted.
It could have been very dangerous, we were told, but it was very funny at the time.