Will TIKTOK be able to present the health of children and adolescents in the United States? As an emergency doctor, I often ask myself this question.
There are some positives for the platform. Trends that become viral, there is a reshaping how young people deal with pop culture, health education and even life saving skills. Children can reach more than ever to learn how to respond to emergency situations; For example, when an overdose of celebrities indicates tiktok lessons How to use NarcanOr experts who teach people CPR practical using modern attractive songs Like Chapell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”. (It is time to update: teaching chest pressure to the “Stayin ‘” by bee Geees is not exactly exactly the most relevant reference with Gen Z.)
But the same basic system that educates one of the users may mislead or harm another.
Disritive Tiktok trends are known as reckless behavior, costs the safety of weak youth, self -esteem, and even sometimes their survival. Children who are not exceeding eight years have died of self -tweet after a blackout challenge, for example, as users intentionally try to strangle themselves until they lose consciousness.
Emergency situations have become content to be consumed. I saw the consequences directly in the youth in the emergency department whose lives are changed forever by simulating what they first saw on social media.
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I will never forget to take care of the 14 -year -old girl who swallowed the contents of a bottle of benadryl at one evening in 2021 while doing something called Benadryl, a Tiktok trend where teenagers chase hallucinations by taking toxic doses of allergy medicine. Instead, she suffered severe heart damage – and it took everything to me and had to save her life. She had fresh nails from the blue sky, which are still with me. A reminder that she was just a child, who was seduced by a viral challenge that was almost her life.
Also, its printing in my mind is a night during the residence when I took care of a little girl burning with a scalding water. She had seen a virus video on Twitter, where people merged a designed dance with a hot water in the air for dramatic effect, then tried to repeat it at home. She was distorted and in suffering – her childhood boycotted her not by chance, but by algorithm. While I was wearing her wounds, I kept imagining her years from now, at her wedding, in a white dress, still carrying the scars. Under Hasra, I felt deep anger and sitting: how a reckless thing and can be prevented to leave this permanent mark on a very small person. This experience was an example chilling for how to form behavior platforms.
But it was far from isolated. A few years later, in March 2025, I was working on St. Patrick’s Day as an EMS doctor with an extinguishing department in Chicago when I saw hundreds of teenagers sitting on the edge of the green Chicago river who drinks alcohol from Galon. This is known on social media as Borgs (short for “Gallon Rage Gallon”) and did not see teenagers carrying them until this year. The police made them spoil the jugs to prevent general poisoning. It was not just alcohol or recklessness that surprised me – it was the normalization of everything.
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From the fall of the unstable pyramids in challenging the milk cage to violently stumbled in challenging the scales, the youth suffered from broken necks, suddenly paralyzed, maintaining brain damage and shocking the head in seeking to achieve likes and participants. Tiktok is not to establish that viruses can come at the sharp cost – sometimes fatal -.
Watching these videos – teenagers who risk their lives for likes – chilling them. It is difficult to bear, however it raises millions of views. What does he say about us that we cannot look away? The truth is that we have grown sensitive – and the real question is not only what is wrong with Tiktok, but what is the mistake that happened with us? This question cuts deeper for me, because I devoted my life to saving these children – due on the sides as parents say goodbye, and they do CPR technology on adolescents on the frozen winter nights, and do everything in their power until they have another opportunity. At those moments, I hope that I can reach the phone to tell them to stop passing or put their phones down and choose caution and care for a reckless act, unfortunately they will come.
Tiktok has the ability to save life, but the content that is amplified has the ability to finish one as well. So what should we do in the era of duplication, where both things can correct? Part of the answer lies in restoring responsibility – present to our children, directing what they consume, and holding ourselves as well. Because our children are not just passing – they are chasing viral excitement, which are drawn through trends that are dangerous to young minds. We cannot let the algorithm give way to another accident.
