There's another challenge that's making its way into social media, it's the "condom-snorting challenge" and it's a very bad idea
Don't confuse this with the "condom challenge" from a few years ago where people dropped a water-balloon condom over their heads, this version of the challenge involves snorting an unwrapped condom up one of their nostrils and pulling it out through the mouth. It's definitely not new, but the challenge did get a bit of a resurgence over the weekend.
Is it as dangerous as past challenges like the Tide pod challenge?
Maybe. The condom can become stuck in your nose and potentially block your breathing airways. To put it simply, you could choke! Now if you've got a latex allergy on top of all that, yeah, not good.
A few YouTubers have taken on the challenge and craze trended its way into Facebook and Twitter over the weekend. If you're a parent who is reading this right now, you might want to have that talk with your young ones about the dangers of snorting a condom up your nose, especially if he or she is easily motivated by YouTube stars.
But the big question is: why on earth would someone do this?
Let's dive back into a few past challenges here. There was that one challenge where people would pour salt on their hands and attempt to hold ice until it burns. There was the ice bucket challenge that was done to help ALS. In 2012, there was the cinnamon challenge, where people would swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without the help of any water. In 2017, there was the Tide Pod challenge, where you guessed it, people were biting and swallowing Tide Pods which resulted in quite a few poison center visits. Ewww.
In 2004, a 27-year-old woman accidentally swallowed a condom during sex (we won't get into the HOW part obviously, but you can figure that out). The condom made its way into her lungs which led to her having an pneumonia which caused her lung to collapse. There was also a case where a 26-year-old woman also swallowed a condom but this time, it got in her appendix. She ended up getting appendicitis where the condom caused an infection due to blockage in her appendix. Here's the thing, both of these cases were unintentional. They were accidents!
The earliest occurrence of the condom-snorting challenge that we were able to find was from 2007. In 2013, a girl uploaded a video of her moving a condom up her nose to Taylor Swift's "22". These videos no longer exist on YouTube, but other challengers have taken on the dare since.
There's no question: we are in a culture where some will do ANYTHING to gain a few "likes" or "followers" on social media. Sure, most of us love getting attention to a certain extent. But how far is too far?
To report an incident, call the national poison hotline at 1-800-222-1222 or text POISON to 797979.
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