Condom-Snorting Challenge: Things To Know About The Latest Social Media Fad

Following the “Mannequin Challenge” and the “Tide Pod Challenge,” the new social media craze among youngsters is the “Condom-snorting Challenge.” The increasingly popular trend puts young people at risk of choking and other hazards.

In the challenge, a person takes an unwrapped condom and inhales it through one nostril and pulls it out through their throat. An alarming number of youngsters took up the challenge and uploaded videos of them trying it out despite it being hazardous to health.

According to a report in the Sacramento Bee, a daily newspaper published in Sacramento, California, the challenge has been around for a while. A video of the act was uploaded in June 2007 for the first time and showed how to perform the challenge. It gained popularity when a video of performing the challenge was posted by YouTuber Savannah Strong in the year 2013. The videos were later removed from the social media platform as it violated the site’s policy on harmful and dangerous content, ABC News reported.

Reports state snorting a condom up your nose is a dangerous affair, as it not only poses a choking hazard but puts the person at risk of allergies and infections, according to Forbes.

It also cites two cases where women developed ailments ranging from pneumonia to appendicitis after they accidentally swallowed a condom.

“Even if you manage to successfully pull the condom out through your mouth, inhaling a condom up your nose would be very uncomfortable and potentially quite painful. Would it really be worth all that just to get more likes and views?” asked Bruce Y. Lee, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

According to a report in Fox-affiliated television station KABB-TV, several parents from San Antonio have started attending informative classes on these dangerous trends.

"There are all kinds of drugs and kids are clever, so it's just really what are our kids doing? So, that's what we try to share because these days our teens are doing everything for likes, views, and subscribers. As graphic as it is, we have to show parents because teens are going online looking for challenges and recreating them,” said a state education specialist, Stephen Enriquez.

Several reports believe the return of the condom challenge is probably because of the rise in popularity of the Tide Pod Challenge back in January.

The challenge became so dangerous, it drew a warning from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

In the challenge, teenagers uploaded videos of themselves stuffing their mouth with detergent pods and biting them or cooking with them.

The Tide Pod Challenge first came to light in 2015, when news satire publication the Onion published a column written from a child’s perspective, wondering what it would be like to eat the colored detergent pods which looked a lot like candy.

There was another video posted by College Humor in which a college student swallowed a bunch of detergent pods and said he felt fine, thus giving birth to one of the deadliest social media trends of recent times.