According to published reports, students at two Oldham County high schools near Louisville told teachers they had a gun or a bomb, then recorded their reactions. At least some of them face terroristic threatening charges. Dr. Dan Florell is an Eastern Kentucky University professor specializing in childhood and adolescent development. He said such stunts are nothing new.
“YouTube had a series of these challenges, too. So you had things like the tide pod challenge, where you're supposed to go ahead and try to chew on a tide pod until it exploded in your mouth. Obviously, ingesting detergent is not a good thing. There's been like cinnamon challenges also, which can, if done, to the point of where it was popularized, you know, could be fatal.”
Florell said most young people do such things to get attention, good and bad, and some love the thrill they get while doing it. Others see people who’ve become famous doing them and think, “Why not me?”
“So even though you might think, hey, this could be something a little bit dangerous, maybe I shouldn't look at these kids did it, you know, there's maybe 50 of these videos, and they've all gotten a lot of views. And so maybe it's not such a big deal after all.”
Florell said parents of teens and adolescents need to be aware of the potentially dangerous combination of youth, smart phones and social media.
“As the old saying goes, a watched pot never boils. And so the more kind of monitoring that goes on, the better usually, that you can control some of that behavior.”
Florell acknowledged that’s tougher when children, most of whom have smart phones, are at school.
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