By Gavin Boyle
A Chicago Mom, Denisha, warned other parents about a dangerous TikTok fire trend after her daughter sustained second degree burns on half of her face.
“My mom called me and said that the kitchen cabinets were on fire and that my daughter had burned herself,” Denisha told PEOPLE, recalling the event. “My life has changed drastically since then. I want to warn parents and I want them to sit down with their kids to let them know that they don’t have to partake in everything they see on social media.”
Denisha’s daughter took part in the “fire challenge” which encourages participants to douse their hands in rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer before setting themselves on fire. Typically, the fire lasts for a few seconds as it burns away the alcohol before putting itself out without any harm to the participant.
In Denisha’s daughter’s case, however, the fire spread to the bottle of rubbing alcohol, causing an explosion that set her daughter on fire, as well as part of their house. Her daughter sustained second degree burns on 45-50% of her face, along with extreme damage to her hands.
The trend is one of many that has gone viral in recent years that places its participants in severe danger when things go wrong. Last summer, for example, multiple children were seriously injured when they microwaved food-grade silicon toys after seeing it done on social media.
“[My daughter] stuck it in the microwave. I was watching her and saw her touch it to check it wasn’t too hot when she pulled it out. It all happened so quickly. I heard her scream, and it was like a blood-curdling scream. It had exploded all over her chest, mouth and chin,” said a father whose daughter received third degree burns after heating up a toy. “I was a complete muss. She spent a week in the hospital and for three days of that she was in a coma.”
Not all dangerous trends, though, are related to heat or fire. For several summers, people have been going viral on social media for extreme ding dong ditching where people knock on doors so hard they damage them, often in the middle of the night.
“While ‘ding dong ditch’ has been a hallmark for decades of kids who were looking to have a little mischievous fun, today’s youth have taken things to a more serious level by kicking in door and ultimately causing damage,” the Fleetwood Police Department in Pennsylvania said last summer when the trend began making rounds again.
The serious impacts these trends have had on numerous children is a reminder not only of the dangers of social media but also the importance of parents sitting down with their children and talking with them about what they are seeing online. Additionally, platforms like TikTok need to do a better job regulating their content and ensuring that dangerous trends do not reach millions of people.
Read Next: Two Teens Face Charges After Participating in Devastating TikTok Challenges
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