Risky Social Media Challenges: Keeping Kids Safe – PediaCast 614
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Description
Social media challenges can inspire creativity and encourage generosity, but some of these challenges involve dangerous stunts, substance exposure, or self-harm. Dr Leah Middelberg, Dr Lara McKenzie, and Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason explain how these trends spread, why children and teens are vulnerable, what injuries we see, and how families can build safe online habits. We hope you can join us!
Topic
Risky Social Media Challenges
Guest
Dr Leah Middelberg
Pediatric Emergency Medicine
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Dr Lara McKenzie
Principal Investigator, Center for Injury Research and Policy
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason
Allergy and Immunology Fellow
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Links
Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Center for Injury Research and Policy (NCH)
Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health (AAP)
Problematic Media Use: Screening and Intervention Tools for Clinicians (AAP)
Conversation Starters for Families About Media (AAP)
Episode Transcript
[Dr Mike Patrick]
This episode of PediaCast is brought to you by Pediatric Emergency Medicine and the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of PediaCast. We are a pediatric podcast for moms and dads.
This is Dr. Mike, coming to you from the campus of Nationwide Children’s Hospital. We’re in Columbus, Ohio. It’s episode 614.
We’re calling this one Risky Social Media Challenges, Keeping Kids Safe. I want to welcome all of you to the program. We are so happy to have you with us.
You know, social media challenges can be funny, creative, and even charitable. But some online trends encourage kids and teens to swallow substances, hold their breath, start fires, endure extreme cold, or attempt dangerous stunts. These videos can spread faster than parents, schools, and health experts can respond.
And repeated exposure to the challenges makes risky behavior look normal or safe. Which, of course, risky behavior is not normal, and it is definitely not safe. Today, we explore why young people participate in social media challenges, the injuries doctors are seeing, and how families can nurture the judgment kids need to navigate whatever trend appears next.
Of course, in our usual PediaCast fashion, we have three terrific guests joining us to discuss risky social media challenges. Dr. Leah Middelberg is a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Dr. Lara McKenzie is a principal investigator with the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. And Dr. Anne Elizabeth Mason is an allergy and immunology fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. They will be here with us shortly. Before we get them settled into the studio, though, I do want to remind you that the information presented in every episode of PediaCast is for general educational purposes only.
We do not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. So, if you’re concerned about your child’s health, be sure to call your health care provider. Also, your use of this audio program is subject to the PediaCast Terms of Use Agreement, which you can find at PediaCast.org.
So, let’s take a quick break. We’ll get our experts settled into the studio, and then we will be back to talk about risky social media challenges. It’s coming up right after this.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Dr. Leah Middelberg is an emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University. Dr. Lara McKenzie is a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State and a principal investigator with the Center for Injury Research and Policy. And Dr. Anne Elizabeth Mason is a fellow in allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s and a former pediatric resident here at Nationwide Children’s. All three are pediatric experts who have a passion for keeping kids safe, especially as we think about risky social media challenges. Before we dive into this important conversation, let’s offer a warm PediaCast welcome to our guests, Dr. Leah Middelberg, Dr. Lara McKenzie and Dr. Anne Elizabeth Mason. Welcome to the podcast!
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Hi, thank you for having us.
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Hi, I’m excited to be here. Thanks, Mike.
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
Hi, thank you so much. What an awesome opportunity to kind of talk about childhood injury prevention with some of the best.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yes, and we are excited to talk about this because it’s something that is real and does injure kids and parents need to know about it. So, let’s start off, Leah, what exactly are we talking about when we say a social media challenge and what separates, you know, an ordinary trend from something that’s dangerous?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Yeah, a social media challenge is really a trend on the social media apps where someone might perform a task or an activity that someone maybe challenges them to or invites others to do. And it may be that someone is directly challenged to do the activity by a friend, an acquaintance, a family member, or they might just see it online and say, hey, that looks interesting and attempt to replicate it on their own. I think an example that people are really familiar with is maybe the ice bucket challenge.
And this initially started in 2014 as a way to raise money and awareness for ALS research but morphed into an online phenomenon all its own. And it’ll resurface every few years for various causes. And so, there’s a lot of different types of challenges.
Some are meant to promote healthy behaviors, like maybe stopping smoking or an exercise challenge. But some are inherently risky, and we see those cause injuries in children, young adults in the emergency department.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. And, you know, there are some that, as you say, are really not so dangerous. The ice bucket challenge, you know, didn’t really cause injuries that I know of.
But what we do get concerned about is when these challenges enter into the territory of something that’s dangerous, and that really does happen. And we’ll talk more some specific examples, but there are OK challenges and then challenges that are, we would say, are risky, right?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Yeah. You know, challenges kind of run the gamut of things that are maybe even meant for health promotion. You know, exercise challenges to kind of get everybody to start focusing on exercise or mindfulness, mental health awareness, things like that.
But we do start seeing, as most things do online, challenges start to morph. So, something that might start off kind of innocent and seemingly non-risky can kind of quickly, as people escalate and try to be more outrageous and outdo the next person, can start getting to the territory of being dangerous and potentially causing injuries.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. And we have to remember that teenagers, you know, their brain is not finished maturing. And so, they may make some decisions that we as adults, you know, might filter out and, you know, we might think about doing something and then say, wait, that’s dangerous and I don’t want to do that and stop ourselves.
But teenagers do tend to be more impulsive and don’t have quite that mature of a filter. And so, they really can potentially hurt themselves. Lara, this really even raises to the point of being considered a public health concern.
Why should we all care about teen safety in these risky challenges?
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Well, I think not only the sort of, as Leah said, the widespread different types of challenges, that’s one reason for it being a concern and sort of elevating itself to maybe a public health concern at this stage. It’s also the widespread use of social media and the way that the challenges spread, the virality of the challenges, the sharing, the engagement with a single video can really just explode. So, we know everyone’s got a device at this point, you know, everybody has access, everybody has a device and everybody is using social media.
I think that’s another thing. I think sometimes, you know, parents tend to want to think that my child isn’t going to see these things or my child doesn’t have a social media account. They’re still seeing some of these things.
And so, they might see them on a friend’s device. They might be shared from someone else who does have an account. So, I feel like the exposure is really what is making this such a big problem.
And I guess the algorithms will also accentuate any outrageous content. They’re going to attention, get in your feed, get sent to you and sort of prioritize to the content that you’re going to see. So, it’s kind of like a perfect storm of all these different things happening at the same time.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anne Elizabeth, you know, teenagers have always taken risks. And as I think to my own teenage years, when there was not an Internet available, you would see one off, you know, someone do something risky and, you know, they’re showing off.
But it was really dangerous. And you just shake your head and like, I can’t believe we just did that. But it doesn’t go any further than that particular incident.
Describe how social media really has taken these, you know, risky challenges and made them, you know, more universally seen.
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
Totally, yeah. I think like the risk taking in adolescence is not a new idea or behavior, but it’s the speed, the scale, the speed, the audience and the reinforcement that the digital landscape has kind of given us is what is new. We know that kids have always taken risks, and we know that that’s just part of natural development.
However, now it happens when the behavior is online. And so, what may have been just in front of a couple of friends at school or within your community reaches thousands or even millions of people within hours. And so, the videos make risky acts kind of easy to imitate.
It may hide failed attempts as well. And so, the immediate attention that these kids obtain and the social rewards from the online engagement ultimately encourages further participation and amplifies these risky behaviors.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
I think that this is one of those things where people are like, well, don’t tell everyone what they are because you might put the idea into someone’s head. But we really know, you know, even research tells us that talking about things does not make people necessarily do them. So, I think it’s OK for us to give examples and people really need to have awareness of what’s going on if you haven’t seen one of these.
So, what are some examples of the risky challenges?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Yeah. And I appreciate that that disclaimer that these are kind of examples of things that we viral challenges online and not ideas. But, you know, we can see some of those positive challenges, things like hashtag gratitude challenge where people would share three things that they were grateful for every day and maybe ask someone to join in and do that with them.
But, you know, like we have been talking about, these risky challenges can start to get really concerning. One that I think about is something called the Benadryl challenge. And this is where participants would take a large amount of over-the-counter medicine, diphenhydramine, in an attempt to hallucinate and to film themselves for online content.
We know that this challenge, when it peaked a few years ago, did lead to increase in poison center calls, hospitalizations and even death. I also think about, unfortunately, some self-harm related challenges like the blue whale challenge. This involved escalating self-harm activities and we saw really concerning mental health effects from that.
And I have one example that I think is just really kind of shows how these challenges can morph that I thought was so interesting. There was a challenge a few years ago. It was actually a dance challenge, which, again, sounds so innocent, where people were dancing to a song by a popular artist named Drake.
And it spread online. Celebrities started doing it, posting their own versions. But the dances started getting progressively more dangerous.
People were doing versions where they were dancing next to their moving cars or even on top of their vehicles. Or they were dancing in oncoming traffic. And as you can imagine, this led to injuries as people crashed their cars.
They were hit by vehicles, they tripped, they fell, while trying to complete these challenges. And I think a really recent one that we’ve been seeing here in the last few months over the summer is the neato challenge. That involves taking squishy sensory toys and heating them or microwaving them.
And the gel inside gets really hot and it can actually leak, it can explode. And when that material gets on skin, it can cause burns, really painful, bad burns that have resulted in kids needing to go to the hospital, have procedures. All things we would love to avoid as injury prevention specialists.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. So, putting the object in the microwave, why even do that? Does it like bloat up or something before it explodes?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
I think initially it started as, you know, these are kind of squishy toys. And I think some people might have heated them up in attempts to make them more squishy. But I think then they found that it did look interesting as they heated up.
But obviously this is kind of the sticky gel material. So, as it gets hot and explodes and if it gets on skin, it’s difficult to get off. And so, it can cause really significant burns that are painful and need a lot of treatment.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah. And you don’t see that in the video. Like if it gets on their skin and they’re, you know, yelling and upset, you know, usually they’re not going to post that.
And so, you’re not going to necessarily see the actual injury. And then when you do see someone do it and it looks pretty cool and it looked like they were OK. Larry, can you speak toward why it is that folks, you know, when they see something, you sort of become desensitized to it?
Like, hey, they were successful at doing it. I could be successful too.
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Right. I think of this as like, you know, how can we up the ante is one aspect of it. Like that is part of these challenges.
Like so maybe, you know, like Leah said, doing the dance is not that’s not risky, but doing it on top of a moving car is like, how do we up the ante on all of these things? So, I think that’s what maybe starts to tip some of these maybe seemingly, you know, innocuous things at first into a really risky category. So, I think when kids and adults even see the same thing, you’re sort of desensitized to the risk of it.
It looks so easy. It looks so, oh, I could do this, you know, simple, simple couple steps. And I could do this too and get attention for it.
So, I think that’s kind of, again, a combination of things that are really bringing these challenges to the forefront. Yeah.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, absolutely. Anne Elizabeth, remind us of what it’s like to be a teenager, because we all were teenagers at one time. And what is it about that teenage brain that makes kids more susceptible to doing dangerous things?
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
Yes. The teenage brain is a is an interesting place. The adolescence, as we know, is it’s a super important part of development.
And so, it’s kind of when kids become more independent, they’re starting to figure out their own identity, and they place a lot more relationship and impact with their relationship with peers as opposed to like their own family. So, at the same time, adolescents have a heightened sensitivity to novelty, excitement, reward and a social approval. So that’s kind of part of their amygdala or part of your brain.
But the parts of the brain that manage impulse control, weighing long time consequences is all still developing. And so that’s kind of the frontal lobe component. And so, the immediate rewards of attention, excitement and peer approval are so powerful that they start to kind of outweigh the risks of theoretical consequences that our front part of our brain starts to consider.
And so, this is the digital landscape really changes things because the audience has shifted. And so, we see that there is so much content online. There are no obvious consequences that are filmed.
And so, it ultimately decreases the idea that danger and behaviors and it all becomes normalized. And so, the vulnerabilities and the developing mind of an adolescent really haven’t changed over time. But the digital landscape has.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Leah, how is this playing out in terms of injuries and what’s being seen in emergency departments? You’d mentioned burns, for example.
How common is this? Is it something that just is a one off or are we seeing lots of these kinds of injuries?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
It’s a really good question. And it’s actually a really hard to answer question because, you know, as teens are doing this, maybe they get injuries. They come see me in the emergency department.
As you can imagine, they’re not really forthcoming about maybe how that injury happened, all the circumstances around it. They kind of don’t want to immediately say, hey, I did this because of a social media trend or social media challenge. And to be fair, our us as providers are often not asking.
Right. We’re so busy wanting to make sure we’re fixing their injury and helping them feel better. That we’re maybe not asking or maybe we’re not even aware of these injury patterns that are happening as these trends kind of gain popularity.
So, the prevalence or the how many people are actually doing these challenges is really hard to study. There are some studies kind of from other countries and here in the US that show that maybe it’s around 50 percent or half of kids are doing social media challenges. We actually did a survey in our own ER in the Nationwide Children’s Emergency Department where we asked young teens, hey, have you seen a social media challenge?
You know what it is. And 65 percent had seen one and knew what it was. So, you know, researchers really need faster, kind of consistent ways to identify these emerging challenges and how we connect those with the real-world injuries we’re seeing.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. You know, just it’s fascinating how viral these things really go and how, you know, I’ve certainly seen them. I do.
I will say that if I see that a video is going in that direction, at least the first time I watch. But then, you know, I try to avoid because you don’t want to be a number that encourages kids to do these things. Lara, from a parent standpoint, then, you know, parents are in a great position to talk to their kids about this and to hopefully prevent an injury from happening by talking about it.
What’s the best approach to that?
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Well, I think some ideas for parents are to talk about what kids are seeing online, maybe talk about some of these challenges and why they may be risky or even start the conversation of have you seen or have you heard? And again, this is not to give the kids an idea of how to do things, how to do these dangerous challenges. But, you know, well, have you heard about that one and why might that be, you know, risky or dangerous or cause an injury?
And, you know, what can we have this conversation about what might be at risk by doing that? Another idea is for parents to watch videos with their child and talk about what’s real, what’s fake, what’s safe, what’s not, you know, to kind of do that together. I mean, with the introduction and the widespread use of AI, it’s even harder to tell what’s real and what’s fake and what may have been staged or recorded multiple times before being published, too.
I think that’s another piece of this. So, I think watching things together and talking about it. And maybe a third thing would be modeling, which we ask parents to do all the time when it comes to wearing a seatbelt or wearing a bicycle helmet and when they’re riding a bike to show the correct safety behavior.
So, I think modeling digital health media use is probably another piece of this puzzle, you know, to not be on their devices all the time and to be mindful of what they’re watching and sharing. And as you mentioned a minute ago, just if you see something and you don’t want to sort of add to the noise or the engagement of a bad idea, you’re trying to avoid some of those things as well.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. And there’s a difference between watching it for entertainment and watching it with your kids to be able to have a teachable moment.
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Right. As a teaching tool or what not to do.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. And to, you know, say, OK, they stopped filming here, but what could have happened next?
You know, just to try to build that critical thinking into the whole process. Anne Elizabeth, I know you have some other examples of specific injuries that are being seen from these challenges. We have talked about severe burns.
What are some other specific injuries that we’re seeing?
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
So, during our scoping review, we saw that just how broad the spectrum of injuries was. And so, the chance of injury is super high with some of these risky challenges. Some of them we talked about where the air and oxygen deprivation challenges.
So those are considered like the blackout and choking challenges. We saw the poisoning and medication challenges as well. And so that’s kind of in the category that Dr. Middleburg referenced, which is the Benadryl challenge, which can result in excessive injury and toxicity. Additionally, there are some burn challenges. So that’s considered the fire challenges, as well as the ice and salt challenges, which can cause some chemical burn on the skin. And then the other category is just kind of like the physical trauma.
And so those involve stunts or climbing actions that can kind of produce falls and fractures. One of those is a good example is the milk crate challenge, which came out. And it looks like it’s kind of a game where you, you know, dance on top of these milk crate challenges.
However, then it can lead to substantial orthopedic issues. And then the final one that we kind of saw was the inhalation injuries. And so that’s from something called the cinnamon challenge.
And so, you kind of inhale a bunch of cinnamon powder and end up can kind of cause some injuries to the lung tissue and some prolonged pneumonitis.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, certainly not things that you want to have happen. And the folks who then suffer from those injuries typically don’t go back out with new videos to warn people not to not to do these things. Leah, as we think about different platforms, you know, there’s YouTube, there’s TikTok, Reels in various places.
Is one platform maybe stand out in terms of like not allowing these things to be posted or having some kind of warning or safety information? Or are they all equally dangerous platforms?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Yeah. You know, Dr. Mason mentioned that we actually did a review or we looked at all of the kind of research articles about social media challenges here over the last 20 years. And one piece that we found there was that we were seeing an escalating number really in the last two or three years, especially a huge increase in the number of articles being published about social media challenges, which makes you worried that the number is escalating.
But what we looked at was actually one of the pieces we looked at was platform and which platforms were being discussed most frequently when it came to social media challenges. And as you might imagine, the video-based platforms, so things like YouTube and TikTok, like you mentioned, were the most frequently discussed. This makes sense for a couple reasons.
These are the most popular platforms with young people, with teens and young adults, whereas maybe older Americans especially might favor something like Facebook or Instagram. These video-based platforms really do kind of offer that ripe environment for demonstration. You know, someone doing the video, someone seeing it and doing the imitation.
And then that rapid sharing piece that was discussed earlier about how these things just spread so quickly, so widely. You know, we know that there’s not enough safety content available. You mentioned this, but we looked at, you know, just 125 TikTok videos of something called the Orbeez Challenge, which involved people shooting gel pellets out of these gel blasters.
And sometimes they were shooting at friends and sometimes they were shooting at innocent bystanders. And the injuries we saw there, as you can imagine, were a lot of bruises, contusions, but also really bad eye injuries. And so, we, a part of a study team, looked at just 125 TikTok videos.
And of those 125 TikTok videos, over 255 million views, over 25 million likes and over 198,000 comments. So, people are really engaging with this content. But of those videos and of all that content we looked at, only 2% had any kind of safety mentioned.
So, you know, the dangerous pieces are being shown. But much like you mentioned, that safety content or the safety warning or discussions about how this maybe isn’t a safe behavior is not being discussed.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. And we need that to be discussed for sure.
We have, you know, our podcast here is aimed at parents, but we also have a lot of pediatricians and other health care providers who listen to PediaCast. Anne Elizabeth, what are some ways that medical providers can make a difference in their practices by bringing up this issue?
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
Totally. I think that a big takeaway and something we’ve mentioned a couple times today is that it’s really hard to predict the next viral challenge. And we don’t need pediatricians or parents to be experts on every viral challenge in order to help prevent injury.
But I think our role as pediatricians is to help create a space where we can talk to families about using social media, identifying concerning patterns and give family tools to kind of help navigate this online environment. And so, I think the first step is just to start asking about social media use. So, ask the families and the patients, what platforms do they use and do they notice that social media seems to affect the mood, sleep and even social relationships?
And finally, I think it’s really important to ask if they’ve encountered something online that’s made them feel pressured to participate. It’s just kind of a screening tool to see, hey, have you seen these social media challenges before and have you ever participated? The second idea I would talk about is to give families tools to discuss the social media use at home.
The AAP has an awesome center of excellence on social media and youth mental health, and they have a ton of resources. They talk about conversation starters for families, and they even go through a family media plan outline, which is really great and kind of talks about how to model this behavior for everyone in your home.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, and we’ll put a link to the American Academy of Pediatrics family media use plan in the show notes for this episode so that folks can find it easily because that really is a very helpful tool. Just in terms of thinking intentionally about screen time in general for your family and, you know, putting some guardrails in place and has some great, great ideas there. Leah, you have talked about some of the research studies that you have done regarding these challenges.
Where are some other areas where research and, you know, policy and prevention efforts, you know, what other work is needed and maybe even underway?
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
I think the biggest gap in research is an effective intervention to prevent kids from joining risky social media challenges. And it’s really hard because all challenges don’t look the same. We’ve mentioned a bunch of them here today.
And, you know, so climbing up milk crates doesn’t look the same as swallowing a laundry pod. Right. And so, it’s not like other risky behavior recommendations and interventions that we can make.
Right. It’s not the same as saying, hey, always wear your seatbelt when you’re riding in a car because all these challenges look so different. So, it really is difficult to kind of design something to educate and persuade people and really comes down to teaching that critical thinking about the content we see online.
So, I think one of the biggest gaps in the research in order to get to that effective intervention is why. Why would a teen or a young adult be interested in joining these challenges? And maybe why would they not join a challenge if they see it online?
And so, looking into that motivation piece, because as we’ve mentioned before, I think the added concept of virality or being able to quote unquote go viral with an online video adds just a whole new layer to that risk benefit analysis that teens might be doing in their heads. So actually, Dr. McKenzie and I are working on a study that will do just that. We’re kind of looking at the teens who might be participating in social media challenges and really trying to get to why or why not would they be joining those just as we can eventually hopefully develop an effective intervention to keep kids safe.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah. Yeah. And if you could kind of differentiate between the kids who say yes to the challenge and kids who are like, oh, that’s not for me.
And then look at their past, like, you know, what were they exposed to? What sort of parental strategies maybe show up as different between those two groups? Of course, those kind of retrospective studies aren’t nearly as strong as looking forward to see if behaviors change but definitely got to start somewhere.
And that really takes a lot of thought. And I applaud your efforts and hopefully you’ll be keeping lots of kids safe in the future as we learn more about this. In the meantime, Lara, what are some important take-homes parents need to keep in mind to keep their kids safe from these social media challenges?
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
So, I think one of the takeaways would be that these challenges are difficult to predict, and we don’t know which ones are necessarily going to cause serious real-world injuries. So, to me, it’s a moving target. So that’s one piece to really appreciate.
I think teaching children, teens to have a process for responsible viewing of social media in general is a helpful thing really to pause, to question, consider the consequences and then ask a trusted adult if they’re seeing something that, you know, is concerning or something they’re even considering doing. And then families can always seek help from a healthcare provider to, you know, really determine if social media use in general is becoming a problem, not just about challenges specifically. And then I think another aspect of this, which we really haven’t talked too much about today, but talking to lawmakers about youth online safety and why moving some of the policies or laws that surround and protect children and families, you know, that matters too.
I think that is a slower moving path perhaps to keep kids safe, but one that, you know, is important to pursue as well.
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
So different platforms will have policies trying to prevent these challenges from spreading, but unfortunately, kids are really smart. And so sometimes they get around that. They will change the hashtag, misspell it, kind of alter the challenge name.
And, you know, these things pop up so quickly. I don’t think a few months ago we could have predicted that kids would be microwaving gel toys, right? And so, things kind of pop up so quickly and it’s hard for these really large platforms to moderate and catch things in a really quick time before injuries can occur.
And, you know, I think thinking about how platforms are regulated, federal and state governments, is really important because there haven’t been any laws around social media platforms really in about 30 years. And I don’t think lawmakers 30 years ago could have anticipated the landscape of TikTok in some of the platforms we see today. So, you know, it’s important to think about how the platforms might change in order to make them a safer and better environment for our kids.
There are some states that have tried to take on pieces of this. They have things like age restrictions, but it doesn’t really address how other algorithms work to encourage the outrage content like risky challenges. There are also some other countries that have implemented some new social media policies for their young people.
And so, it’ll be really interesting to see how things change for those young people in those countries as their laws are enacted.
[Dr Mike Patrick]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And don’t forget your state representatives. They often are the ones who pass the laws that really impact safety where you’re living now.
And so, if you are going to do some advocacy with policymakers, it’s a really great place to have some impact. But as you say, that is slower moving and there’s lots that parents can do right now, a lot of which we have talked about. So, this has been a fantastic conversation.
Really appreciate all three of you joining us for it. For the listeners, we are going to have resources for you in the show notes. So, if you head over to pdacast.org, click on the show notes for this episode and you will find those links. We’ll have links to Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, also to the Center for Injury Research and Policy, also at Nationwide Children’s, and then several links from the American Academy of Pediatrics, including that family media use plan that we had talked about. So once again, Dr. Leah Middelberg, Dr. Lara McKenzie and Dr. Anne Elizabeth Mason, thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with us today.
[Dr Leah Middelberg]
Thank you for having us.
[Dr Lara McKenzie]
Thank you. It’s great to be here again.
[Dr Anne Elizabeth Mason]
Thank you.
[MUSIC]
[Dr Mike Patrick]
We are back with just enough time to say thanks once again to all of you for taking time out of your day and making PediaCast a part of it. We really do appreciate your support. Also, thanks again to our guests this week, Dr. Leah Middelberg, Dr. Lara McKenzie and Dr. Anne Elizabeth Mason. Don’t forget, you can find PediaCast wherever podcasts are found. There might be an easier way for you to subscribe and listen. We’re in the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Audible, YouTube, and most other podcast apps for iOS and Android.
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We always appreciate when you share your thoughts about the show, and we love connecting with you on social media. You’ll find us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, X, and Blue Sky. Simply search for PediaCast.
Don’t forget about our sibling podcast. That would be PediaCast CME. It is similar to this program.
We do turn the science up a couple notches and offer free continuing medical education credit for those who listen. That includes physicians, but also nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers, and dentists. And since Nationwide Children’s is jointly accredited by all of those professional organizations, it’s likely we offer the credits you need to fulfill your state’s continuing medical education requirements.
Shows and details are available at the landing site for that program, pdacastcme.org. You can also listen wherever podcasts are found. Simply search for PediaCast CME.
And then I also host a faculty development podcast from the Center for Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. If you are a teacher in academic medicine or a faculty member in any of the health sciences, then this is a podcast for you. And you can find FAMEcast at famecast.org and wherever podcasts are found by simply searching for, you got it, FAMEcast. Thanks again for stopping by. And until next time, this is Dr. Mike saying, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay involved with your kids. So long, everybody.
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