Teens Risk Their Lives With 'Tide Pod Challenge'

The Internet loves a good challenge, and some of the more famous ones—such as the Running Man Challenge, #SoGoneChallenge, and Mannequin Challenge—are fairly wholesome, and well, not dangerous. Then there's the Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge, which doctors warned against, but teenagers still attempted with shot glasses or the mouths of plastic bottles.

So it's no wonder that when something like the absurdly ridiculous Tide Pods Challenge rolls around, kids thoughtlessly try to jump on it. The idea of eating Tide capsules was a recurring joke a few weeks ago; now kids are actually trying to ingest them.

To compete in the challenge, participants have to record themselves ingesting the laundry packets and post the video online. In some videos, teens "cook" the pods in a frying pan before consuming them. Someone even came up with the an "edible tide pod recipe," which calls for parchment paper, a brownie pan, and Sprite.

If the dangers of consuming an inedible household product like Tide aren't obvious, then this warning issued by The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 2013 might do the trick. 

A satirical story published by The Onion in 2015 skews the use of the pods, by telling the story of a kid who ingests the packets because he thinks they're candy. College Humor touched on the same subject in a 2017 video, called "Don't Eat the Laundry Pods," where a man eats an entire bowl of pods and ends up in the hospital. In 2018, it's a trend that Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has to tell you not to try. See his Tide-backed message below.