It's Time We Challenge Ourselves Differently

During high school I used to babysit my three young cousins. After a particularly memorable fiasco involving the youngest, who was two at the time, smearing markers all over a window while the oldest kept me distracted. I busted out some Windex and started scrubbing away at the assorted colors. While scrubbing the curious two-year-old asked me if I could pour some of the Windex into her cup. I explained to her that I couldn’t because Windex, even though it looks like Kool-Aid, is just for cleaning windows so she ran away screaming ‘yuck’. If a two-year-old can understand that cleaning products aren’t meant to be consumed why are older millennials currently shoving tide pods into their mouths as some peculiar way to challenge themselves?

According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers the effects of improper exposure to tide pods can cause seizures, pulmonary edema, respiratory arrest, coma, and death. In 2017 the AAPCC only handled 53 intentional exposures to tide pods among 13 to 19-year old’s. That number rose to 191 cases in 2018. It really isn’t funny to see someone shove a tide pod into their mouth. I’m sure those who have done it don’t find it very funny when they end up with chemical burns on the inside of their mouths.

Another challenge arising is ‘The Coil Challenge’. This challenge involves people pressing their arms onto oven racks. The Coil Challenge is literally people purposefully mutilating their bodies and I just don’t understand. How are these amusing? I’ve seen the survival of the fittest jokes but I’m just not laughing.

Do we live in a society of idiots? Instead of challenging ourselves to live better lives we’re challenging ourselves to put dish cleaner in our mouths and 2nd degree burns on our arms. We continuously complain about snap chat updates, and we’re okay with those complaints, but we ridicule those who complain about the wage gap or violence or politics. We need to stop caring about and promoting such silly and quite frankly childish issues and actions and look at the bigger picture. You may be asking yourself, what is the bigger picture exactly? Let me paint it for you.

We need to stop glorifying this stupidity. Stop giving it attention, stop tweeting about how funny it is, stop reposting the videos of people performing it. We keep wondering why our country is in so much turmoil and why we have a president with such a low approval rating and this is why. We are spending so much time conversing about these absolutely pointless acts and promoting needless issues. Why is it okay to complain about the snap chat update but not about the wage gap? Why am I told to stop talking when I bring up the second amendment but encouraged when I bring the latest crazy stunt plaguing the internet? Maybe because it is more difficult to converse about the touchy topics like the second amendment, but then why can’t we challenge ourselves to do so

The bigger picture is simply that we need to step up. We need to educate ourselves on different world issues. Take a stand against poverty, or the wage gap, or the racism that does still exist in this country.

According to the United States Department of labor, in 2016 white women still made 81cents to every one dollar earned by a white man with the same education level. With women of color the gap was even larger. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2016 there were 40.6 million people in poverty. How are these topics less important than Tide Pod challenges or the snap chat update?

I challenge you start conversing about the issues that matter, whatever side you might take on them, start that conversation within your community rather than what the latest unhealthy trend may be.