PHOENIX — Teens on social media always come up with new dares to rack up likes and views.
But some are dangerous.
Here are a few trends parents should be aware of:
We'll start with the bright eye challenge. Long story short, don't do it.
It involves putting a mixture of hand sanitizer and bleach in a bag, putting it on your eye and then your eye supposedly changes color.
Instead of brightening eyes, other teens are trying to turn themselves into a Smurf.
One TikTok user drank nothing but food coloring for 11 days to see what would happen.
He claims his skin turned blue.
Experts say this challenge probably won't kill you, at least not right away, but all that dye could cause problems later on.
"Whether it's safe or not, probably not, I mean it's all artificial chemicals, so you know the risks of developing some sort of allergic reaction to it is probably higher," Dr. Blake Bulloch with Phoenix Children's Hospital explained. “Which is a nice segue to the salt one because that one could kill you."
Next is the salt challenge. It involves trying to eat as much salt as possible. Take an entire container of salt with an open mouth and pour it in.
But too much salt all at once can cause big problems because salt draws out moisture, and humans are mostly water.
"It dehydrates yourself,” Bulloch said. “That can lead to seizures to coma and even to death."
And not to mention high blood pressure, hypertension stroke and, of course, choking on all that salt.
Then there’s the cereal challenge. That involves pouring milk and cereal in a person’s mouth and another person eating from it.
“The person who has their mouth filled with the milk and cereal is at risk for aspiration,” Bulloch said. “If they laugh or happened to gag, they could easily aspirate.”
Aspirate means choke on all that cereal and milk -- not good.
"And then the person is doing it, just the germ factor, I mean, there's all sorts of organisms that live in your mouth."
TikTok does put warnings on videos that show risky behavior. The social media app has removed other dangerous challenges altogether.
Experts say to make sure you know what your kids are into and what they're posting on social media.
Here's a list of more things parents should watch out for on TikTok.
FROM 2020:
