As the collective intelligence of teenagers takes a nosedive over the past few years, TikTok and Instagram trends seem to get more and more dangerous.
It is no secret that teenagers tend to pursue ridiculous stunts and actions for attention, but with social media growing ever more prevalent in our communities, we see a platform that gets created that encourages this behavior.
For example,an uptrend of videos are popping up on sites like youtube which showcase a group of boys going into a public bathroom and screaming as loud as possible. “I love watching those videos, those dudes just straight up start screeching in the middle of a Walmart” said Senior Suleman Chaudhry while watching one of those videos.
With a growing teenage audience that continue to support these types of rash and obnoxious videos, it is unlikely that there will be a decline in “Screaming in a public bathroom prank” videos anytime soon
It’s not only the obnoxious pranks that are on the rise, more dangerous and life threatening actions have been spurred on like “Throwing up fake gang signs in the hood” type of videos make a comeback.
People doing this have not only put themselves in life threatening scenarios, but also directly angered several populations in places such as Compton, Chicago, and Detroit. These people looking to cause a scene go out into gang populated areas and make a complete target of themselves for views and a few laughs. “It’s just not worth it, the views you get are not worth the hospital bills” comments Senior Jesse Mimms reviewing the aforementioned videos.
Mimms makes a great point on these types of content, pranks have escalated from eating hazardous chemicals or public disruption to actively provoking reactions from dangerous individuals that have lifetime consequences. But it’s hard to see these consequences when these people are only getting more and more views for their content, potentially making millions of the mild amusement of people watching these videos.
The attention they receive, either negative or positive, just seems to spur teen channels like TopNotchIdiots, and Kjsmooth, who seem to be degrading into either fake or more dangerous content. Not even the criticism seems to faze these people, and the only option to help these trends die out is to simply ignore and click off these types of videos. “Anytime I see some dumb prank channel on my feed, I click on the 3 dots to the side and select Not Interested, hopefully they won’t show up again” describes Mimms on how to help kill these channels.
No matter how many articles or videos people make to expose these trends, the only way to truly bring this to an end is to turn around and ignore them.
