What Is 'Shell On' Challenge? Doctors Warn Against Bizarre Snapchat Trend

A new social media craze, called the "shell on" challenge, has raised concerns among doctors, who are warning parents and children of its dangers. Teenagers are attempting to eat food with its plastic packaging, cardboard boxes and fruit peels, and posting the videos to Snapchat as part of the bizarre trend.

"I don't know that a lot of teenagers think ahead to, 'oh, I'm gonna wash this lemon before I do this challenge,'" Dr. Danelle Stabel with the Henry Ford Health System, in Detroit, Michigan, reportedly said. He added that this was the only concern in terms of pesticides coating the outside of an unpeeled fruit. But, the far more concerning matter was about the plastic wrappings which the teenagers were trying to consume, which could cause immediate danger.

"Those are more concerning to me because anything that you eat that is not meant to be digested, you can choke on," Stabel said. "The risk of breathing that in and choking is the biggest thing to me, and again it's just not meant to be digested depending on how big of a bite they take... I always encourage parents to be active in their kids' social media accounts and know what they're posting online."

One of the recent videos linked to the challenge showed Liam Hamm, a sophomore at McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona, biting through a plastic bag filled with carrots.

“Ya’ll eat your lunch with or without the shell,” read a caption along with the video of Hamm tearing through plastic packaging with his teeth.

Local media Arizona Central spoke with Hamm who gave details about the challenge, saying: "It just looks funny, because it's not really a shell but people are calling things shells. I guess that is what's funny about it... It's the Tide Pod challenge minus the fact that it's not dangerous.”

Last year in January, parents were concerned about the "Tide Pod challenge" in which teenagers were stuffing their mouth with detergent pods and biting into them or cooking with them. The American Association of Poison Control Centers issued warnings at the time about the hazardous effects of consuming the detergent pods.

This was not the only dangerous social media craze that had attracted teenagers in 2018. The "Blue Whale Challenge" — which began in 2016 but gained popularity last year — was said to be the most dangerous of many such trends, in which teenagers participated in a "suicide game" which sometimes ended with participants taking their own lives.

Earlier this year, Netflix’s horror film “Bird Box” starring Sandra Bullock, also led to a viral trend on the internet. The Bird Box challenge saw people doing their everyday tasks, in some cases even driving a car, blindfolded.