People issuing a viral video dare is common on YouTube. These YouTube challenge can be for a good cause like the ice bucket challenge, or silly like the mannequin challenge, or dangerous like the recent Tide Pod challenge. The Tide Pod challenge is where someone posts a video of them eating or chewing on a Tide Pod. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds. The dangers of eating laundry detergent include diarrhea, vomiting, hospitalization, and potentially death. Why do children put themselves in risk to do these challenges? There’s a number of reasons. They want to be part of a viral phenomenon. They want to find challenges to do with friends so they feel apart of something. And they’re teenagers which means they don’t always make the best decisions as their brains aren’t fully developed. As social media challenges becomes viral we see children upping the stakes to outdoor one another. Often this means that what started out as a relatively tame can escalate quickly. The planking challenge is a good example of this. As it became more popular, people were taking greater and greater risks. Because challenges can escalate quickly, we recommend that parents are proactive in talking to their children about social media challenges and how to respond appropriately when challenges are issues. For more tips to improve communication with your kids, visit the Effective Communicate page on Smarter Parenting.