Tide Pod Challenge: How Can We Effectively Protect Teens?

[Estlobies]

This is it. I honestly think that eugenics might be the only thing that help us now, we've exhausted all other options.

[Ifreann]

This is it. I honestly think that eugenics might be the only thing that help us now, we've exhausted all other options.

You say this as though you think eugenics was never tried before.

[Kennlind]

Late nature take it's course. There are very few people that are seriously doing the "tide pod challenge" - fun fact: IT WAS A MEME. It was created as a JOKE and nobody intended for people to actually do it.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

This is it. I honestly think that eugenics might be the only thing that help us now, we've exhausted all other options.

You say this as though you think eugenics was never tried before.

Nazi Germany wasn't exactly elected to resort to mass murder of Jews by the millions. I think modern society has better ways to make sure eugenicists speak for popular opinion.

Hell, there wasn't even any strong evidence that those kicking up a fuss over California's recent eugenics program spoke for popular opinion, yet they rolled it back just in case.

[The Parkus Empire]

This is it. I honestly think that eugenics might be the only thing that help us now, we've exhausted all other options.

Options for what?

[Ifreann]

You say this as though you think eugenics was never tried before.

Nazi Germany wasn't exactly elected to resort to mass murder of Jews by the millions. I think modern society has better ways to make sure eugenicists speak for popular opinion.

Hell, there wasn't even any strong evidence that those kicking up a fuss over California's recent eugenics program spoke for popular opinion, yet they rolled it back just in case.

A eugenics program is a eugenics program regardless of its popularity.

[Manokan Republic]

This would make a good nation state's issue.

"Teens across the country have started consuming Tide Pods as a result of the Tide Pod challenge, with a growing number of kids being hospitalized after consuming copious amounts of tide pods, a popular form of laundry detergent."


"This is outrageous!" Claims concerned parent @@random name@@. "How can the nation go on and let these poor kids consume toxic substances such as this? Tide pod consumption should be discouraged, and warning labels should be placed on all of these substances telling kids just how dangerous they are! It's the responsibility of the government and corporations to keep kids safe from these sorts of practices!"

"Nonsense", claims CEO @@random name@@, of the Tide Pod company "Kids will be kids, and you can't keep them safe from everything. If the parents are really concerned about their kids doing something as foolish as eating a tide pod, then it's their responsibility to take care of their kid and make sure they do not. Unnecessary restrictions on business will bloat costs without seeing any real world impact on reducing tide consumption. What kid reads warning labels anyways?

"I agree that this has become a problem" Claims @@randome name@@, your department of Child safety chief "But we shouldn't place restrictions on businesses or unduly expect the burden to be carried by parents alone. Instead we should create a government education program, predominately in schools, to teach people the danger of eating tidepods and to monitor and discourage other trends among teens that may also be dangerous. It will be expensive, but can we really put a price on the safety of our kids?"

"Come on, try it!" claims @@random name@@, the teenage kid of one of the workers in your office. "You know you want to! It tastes all lemony fresh, and sometimes they come in different flavors! Why do grown-ups always try and ruin us kid's fun? I say let us do what we want, and not let a few stupid people who took the game too far ruin everybody's fun. Let's let kids be kids!"

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

The only solution is to stop letting kids use the Internet in the first place. It's a worse influence than their friends could ever be.

Worth noting that despite this latest fad, the vast majority of teens (and even older children!) manage to use the internet without deciding that stupid shit on the net is a good idea to emulate.

And yet, people fearmonger about teens imitating porn. Why is that the only medium that is applied to?

Here's an idea, if you find something on YouTube that isn't a bad influence, why not download it, and then let them browse the folder to which it was downloaded with the Internet access switched off?

That won't do a damn thing. Most chemicals in high school chemistry labs look delicious, yet most students manage to refrain from drinking them.

The only solution is to stop letting kids use the Internet in the first place.It's a worse influence than their friends could ever be.

Kids are more likely to go along with whatever dumb ideas that their friends come up with than whatever dumb thing they see online. My friends got me into more trouble as a kid then doing anything dumb I saw online. Plus Blocking the internet does not block the ability of a teenager and/or their friends to think of something really dumb to try. I worked at a scout camp for several summers, the kids on staff went without any sort of internet for weeks at a time. Shockingly this lack of internet didn't prevent them from doing stupid and dangerous things. The internet certainly hasn't helped things but there's no realistic way to prevent a a dumb kid from doing something dumb.

The real question is whether or not the Internet is worse than pre-Internet ideas spread amongst friends, and from everything involving the Internet, it seems like it is.

A scout camp might go without Internet, but that doesn't mean they forget everything they saw there.

[Reploid Productions]

And yet, people fearmonger about teens imitating porn. Why is that the only medium that is applied to?

Kinda answered your own question there, people do like to whargarble moral panic about omgtehpr0nz when the danger is vastly overblown.

All that being said, I am certainly all for parents keeping tabs on what their crotchspawn are getting up to online. Certainly my mother did when we first got internet in the 90s, and she was able to do so quite successfully without resorting to draconian measures. Blanket-blockading all kids/minors/whatever from the internet is impractical and probably ineffective due to lazy parents not taking the appropriate measures. The Tide Pod fad certainly isn't dire enough to merit such extreme measures.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Kinda answered your own question there, people do like to whargarble moral panic about omgtehpr0nz when the danger is vastly overblown.

And yet, the reasoning they apply to porn applies more so to much if not most of the rest of the Internet.

All that being said, I am certainly all for parents keeping tabs on what their crotchspawn are getting up to online. Certainly my mother did when we first got internet in the 90s, and she was able to do so quite successfully without resorting to draconian measures. Blanket-blockading all kids/minors/whatever from the internet is impractical and probably ineffective due to lazy parents not taking the appropriate measures. The Tide Pod fad certainly isn't dire enough to merit such extreme measures.

Or you could, you know, make it a law and start fining parents for failing to enforce it.

The Tide Pod fad isn't dire enough on its own, but it's part of a pattern that most definitely is dire enough. The Internet keeps feeding kids BS, and they keep falling for it. Enough is enough.

[Central Asian Republics]

The problem is that teens should know better than to put Tide Pods in their mouth and bite into it.

There's a difference between a small child who's curious about a object they've never seen before to a teenager who knows exactly what Tide Pods are and what they're used for.

At this point, it should be common sense for these people, so telling them not to do something is useless. What's perhaps the best way to prevent the problem is to let them do it. Let them taste literal washing detergent, let them regret their actions. Experience is what gives wisdom, a wise man wasn't born yesterday.

[SOAS]

the majority of teens are not eating tide pods.
there have been only around 50 or so actual reported incidents.
it is not a "challenge" as most media would like you to think.
It started as a joke on tumblr, calling them "forbidden fruit" as a joke, and it then spread to Instagram and twitter and took off from there.
So it was very much a meme, just like the "Kys" and "drink bleach" of 2015-2016.
Then what im assuming is a few foolish or particularly clueless kids didn't get the joke and actually ate tide pods.
still a stupid meme.
Does a few idiots eating laundry detergent mean that all teens are idiots that need to be relentlessly censored and monitored?
no, of course not, despite what some people on this forum seem to think.

as usual, the mainstream media, and for lack of a better word, "normies", continue to overreact and blow everything online way out of proportion.

to clarify, around 40 teens, out of around 40 million people aged 10-19, have actually ingested tide pods and been hospitalized/treated for it.

There is no "Challenge". It was a stupid meme that a few people didn't get, and ate poison.
Snopes did a decent fact check that didn't blow things way out of porportion like most media did: https://www.snopes.com/tide-pod-challenge/

[Wallenburg]

Sadly, there's really only so much you can do to protect people from doing stupid, dangerous shit. A lot of it probably comes down to parenting, to raise their kids to use some common goddamn sense and not do stupid shit for pointless approval. You can change the appearance of the pods to make them look less appealing, you can slap warning labels on them, you can get awareness campaigns going... but all of that is still going to be pointless so long as you've got teens and kids willing to do stupid shit for the likes/due to peer pressure.

I mean, maybe get Youtube and other video hosting services to demonetize/unlist/remove such videos, thus removing the ability for them to earn that approval, but I've little confidence in Youtube's content enforcement abilities given how often it gets abused to take down perfectly legit videos.

That won't do a damn thing. Most chemicals in high school chemistry labs look delicious, yet most students manage to refrain from drinking them.

The only solution is to stop letting kids use the Internet in the first place. It's a worse influence than their friends could ever be.

You can't come up with a better solution than "ban the Internet!!!"? Seriously?

Worth noting that despite this latest fad, the vast majority of teens (and even older children!) manage to use the internet without deciding that stupid shit on the net is a good idea to emulate.

And yet, people fearmonger about teens imitating porn. Why is that the only medium that is applied to?

The porn fearmongering is stupid as well.

Here's an idea, if you find something on YouTube that isn't a bad influence, why not download it, and then let them browse the folder to which it was downloaded with the Internet access switched off?

Because downloading a video file from the Internet is far more expensive, time-consuming, and unpleasant than just watching the video online.

[Sriker]

I'm in my last year of Middle school And I saw a girl giving them to a few boys After School it is Bad when Your Constanly Told To Do it

[Central Asian Republics]

I'm in my last year of Middle school And I saw a girl giving them to a few boys After School it is Bad when Your Constanly Told To Do it

There comes a moment where you really have to think to yourself: "should I really eat washing detergent because someone from school told me to?"

Peer pressure can only go so far, granted, you could do something extremely regrettable if many people told you to, but to pin any decisions made solely on peer pressure is foolish.

[Zanera]

If I do something that kind of dumb then I'll do it strictly of my own volition.

[Emericia]

That won't do a damn thing. Most chemicals in high school chemistry labs look delicious, yet most students manage to refrain from drinking them.

The only solution is to stop letting kids use the Internet in the first place. It's a worse influence than their friends could ever be.

Banning the internet is a foolish knee-jerk reaction. For every 1 teen that has consumed tide pods because of the trend on social media, there are there are thousands messing around with python, who stand to become the next generation of programmers.

[Imperium Sidhicum]

If you ask me, idiots shouldn't be sheltered from the consequences of their stupidity. If some of them die because of it, good riddance.

[Xmara]

This would make a good nation state's issue.

"Teens across the country have started consuming Tide Pods as a result of the Tide Pod challenge, with a growing number of kids being hospitalized after consuming copious amounts of tide pods, a popular form of laundry detergent."


"This is outrageous!" Claims concerned parent @@random name@@. "How can the nation go on and let these poor kids consume toxic substances such as this? Tide pod consumption should be discouraged, and warning labels should be placed on all of these substances telling kids just how dangerous they are! It's the responsibility of the government and corporations to keep kids safe from these sorts of practices!"

"Nonsense", claims CEO @@random name@@, of the Tide Pod company "Kids will be kids, and you can't keep them safe from everything. If the parents are really concerned about their kids doing something as foolish as eating a tide pod, then it's their responsibility to take care of their kid and make sure they do not. Unnecessary restrictions on business will bloat costs without seeing any real world impact on reducing tide consumption. What kid reads warning labels anyways?

"I agree that this has become a problem" Claims @@randome name@@, your department of Child safety chief "But we shouldn't place restrictions on businesses or unduly expect the burden to be carried by parents alone. Instead we should create a government education program, predominately in schools, to teach people the danger of eating tidepods and to monitor and discourage other trends among teens that may also be dangerous. It will be expensive, but can we really put a price on the safety of our kids?"

"Come on, try it!" claims @@random name@@, the teenage kid of one of the workers in your office. "You know you want to! It tastes all lemony fresh, and sometimes they come in different flavors! Why do grown-ups always try and ruin us kid's fun? I say let us do what we want, and not let a few stupid people who took the game too far ruin everybody's fun. Let's let kids be kids!"

Remove the direct references to Tide (in case of legal issues) and submit it as an issue.

Also, I didn’t believe this at first when my mom told me about it. I thought it was just one of those things you see on Facebook that’s fake.

But nope. Why in the world would someone eat a laundry pod? Just...wow...

[Tekania]

Eugenics not needed.... Eugenics implies some planned control of the gene pool.... people killing themselves moronically munching on tide-pods is just natural selection..... not eugenics.

[Chernoslavia]

Also, it's pretty fucking amazing that a trend of eating of goddamn Tide Pods is the first thing to ever establish a general unity among the various political factions of NS General.

Nah, not the first. NSG really comes together from all across the political spectrum pretty much any time we get either a Scientologist (haven't had one of those in years, not since the aftermath of Chanology,) a Young Earth Creationist, a Flat Earther, or a Geocentrist trying to argue in NSG. Unfortunately, folks who hold those particular beliefs tend to be quite a bit more likely to end up breaking the rules and thus seldom last for very long.

Wrong.

So I guess the estimated 4,300 under-21 alcohol-related deaths per year in the US are a collective hallucination then?

As for the actual topic of the Tide Pods.... there's really no solid cure for stupid. Teenagers are especially prone to feeling utterly invincible despite all evidence and common sense to the contrary. "Oh, that bad effect won't happen to me." mentality. Couple that with a "for the lulz" or "oh man, this is totally nuts I bet it'll go viral and be awesome!", you get a recipe for people doing incredibly dumb, unsafe stuff. This isn't some new thing either, teens (and adults, for that matter) have been doing idiotic stuff since the concept of teenagers first became a thing, just look up crap like goldfish swallowing or pole sitting, neither of which had the internet to blame for becoming a thing. The internet just makes it vastly easier for idiotic fads to spread like wildfire and achieve a broader reach in a shorter time than in the pre-internet era.

No I mean you're wrong about teens drinking just to be cool or as a result of peer pressure. I drank for the same reason everyone else on earth does.

[Rusozak]

Eugenics not needed.... Eugenics implies some planned control of the gene pool.... people killing themselves moronically munching on tide-pods is just natural selection..... not eugenics.

This. Do nothing. Anyone stupid enough to knowingly eat tide pods only has themselves to blame. Let nature take its course, I say.

[Katganistan]

Aside from teaching teens to read and not to follow the crowd, what are we supposed to do? Ban laundry detergent? They'll just find some other dumb challenge -- the icewater challenge, the cinnamon challenge, anyone remember idiots killing themselves planking?

I don't know, teach them they aren't immortal, the sun doesn't shine out of their asses, and some things mom and dad can't fix?

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

I'm in my last year of Middle school And I saw a girl giving them to a few boys After School it is Bad when Your Constanly Told To Do it

There comes a moment where you really have to think to yourself: "should I really eat washing detergent because someone from school told me to?"

Peer pressure can only go so far, granted, you could do something extremely regrettable if many people told you to, but to pin any decisions made solely on peer pressure is foolish.

Boys risk having to drop out of school for child support bills by having sex. What makes you think eating poison if it would impress a girl is a bridge too far for them?

Instead of ignoring human nature, why not cut this off at the source by keeping them off the Internet?

That won't do a damn thing. Most chemicals in high school chemistry labs look delicious, yet most students manage to refrain from drinking them.

The only solution is to stop letting kids use the Internet in the first place. It's a worse influence than their friends could ever be.

Banning the internet is a foolish knee-jerk reaction. For every 1 teen that has consumed tide pods because of the trend on social media, there are there are thousands messing around with python, who stand to become the next generation of programmers.

Tell schools to teach it, then. Or at least have it available in a supervised context on school computers.

They could make time for it by cramming fewer Shakespeare plays down students' throats.

[Manokan Republic]

This would make a good nation state's issue.

"Teens across the country have started consuming Tide Pods as a result of the Tide Pod challenge, with a growing number of kids being hospitalized after consuming copious amounts of tide pods, a popular form of laundry detergent."


"This is outrageous!" Claims concerned parent @@random name@@. "How can the nation go on and let these poor kids consume toxic substances such as this? Tide pod consumption should be discouraged, and warning labels should be placed on all of these substances telling kids just how dangerous they are! It's the responsibility of the government and corporations to keep kids safe from these sorts of practices!"

"Nonsense", claims CEO @@random name@@, of the Tide Pod company "Kids will be kids, and you can't keep them safe from everything. If the parents are really concerned about their kids doing something as foolish as eating a tide pod, then it's their responsibility to take care of their kid and make sure they do not. Unnecessary restrictions on business will bloat costs without seeing any real world impact on reducing tide consumption. What kid reads warning labels anyways?

"I agree that this has become a problem" Claims @@randome name@@, your department of Child safety chief "But we shouldn't place restrictions on businesses or unduly expect the burden to be carried by parents alone. Instead we should create a government education program, predominately in schools, to teach people the danger of eating tidepods and to monitor and discourage other trends among teens that may also be dangerous. It will be expensive, but can we really put a price on the safety of our kids?"

"Come on, try it!" claims @@random name@@, the teenage kid of one of the workers in your office. "You know you want to! It tastes all lemony fresh, and sometimes they come in different flavors! Why do grown-ups always try and ruin us kid's fun? I say let us do what we want, and not let a few stupid people who took the game too far ruin everybody's fun. Let's let kids be kids!"

Remove the direct references to Tide (in case of legal issues) and submit it as an issue.

Also, I didn’t believe this at first when my mom told me about it. I thought it was just one of those things you see on Facebook that’s fake.

But nope. Why in the world would someone eat a laundry pod? Just...wow...

I can't think of a good name for it.

Maybe a "Tode pod"? But that doesn't sound as good for whatever reason. xP