First there was kids eating Tide Pods. Then came the Condom Challenge. The latest dangerous trend to gain some traction on social media? The Fire Challenge — and yes, it’s as terrifying (and stupid) as it sounds.
A 12-year-old Detroit girl was hospitalized with severe burns after she tried the Fire Challenge, based off a YouTube video.
“She came running up my hallway on fire from her knees to her hair,” her mother, Brandi Owens, told Fox 2 in Detroit of her daughter, Timiyah Landers.
What is the Fire Challenge?
Owens said her daughter’s two friends admitted that they were doing the Fire Challenge before she was burned — something they said they saw on YouTube. It involves pouring rubbing alcohol all over the body and then lighting it on fire.
A look on YouTube and Instagram shows that this is, sadly, not a new thing. People have been doing the Fire Challenge since at least 2014 — and probably long before that. A mother in Charlotte, North Carolina, was arrested that year for filming her 16-year-old son doing the challenge.
The Fire Challenge can be deadly
And it’s apparently experiencing a resurgence, thanks to people wanting Internet fame — or infamy. What they don’t understand, however, is how humans naturally react to literally being on fire.
“There’s a misconception that they’re going to be able to light themselves on fire, get a cool video and then quickly put the flames with shower water,” Parkland Memorial Hospital burn specialist Stephanie Campbell told Washington 4. “But it’s absolutely not true.”
Instead, as Fire Challenge videos show, humans don’t turn on the water, but instead shake their bodies in an attempt to put out the flames.
And, unfortunately, many of these teens end up with serious scars that last a lifetime — and it could turn fatal, too. Young Timiyah is sadly finding that out the hard way. She’s currently on a ventilator at a Michigan hospital with burns on 49 percent of her body and will be in the hospital for several months.
Owens is now calling for YouTube to ban the Fire Challenge videos.
“Monitor these kids, especially with these phones, and if I could after with this happening — my kids would never be able to be on social media,” Owens told the news station. “No more iPhones. Nothing.”
