YouTube is pulling down videos of US teenagers eating detergent | World News - Hindustan Times
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YouTube is pulling down videos of US teenagers eating detergent

ByHT Correspondent
Jan 19, 2018 03:37 PM IST

The ‘Tide Pod’ challenge dares people to bite into a colourful detergent ball launched by the American company Tide in 2012.

If you think people cannot get more bizarre than cementing their head inside a microwave, you are wrong.

Please do not perform the Tide Pod Challenge.(Tide)
Please do not perform the Tide Pod Challenge.(Tide)

Teenagers in the United States are eating detergent and sharing videos on social media platforms. The ‘Tide Pod’ challenge dares people to bite into a colourful detergent ball launched by the American company Tide in 2012.

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“Teens trying to be funny are now putting themselves in danger by ingesting this poisonous substance,” Ann Marie Buerkle, chairperson of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, told Good Morning America.

The new social media craze has attracted so many takers that YouTube has decided to pull down videos of people performing the challenge.

“YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm. We work to quickly remove flagged videos that violate our policies,” YouTube said in a statement.

The producing company also came forward and reminded Americans that their product is for doing laundry and not for human consumption.

“What should Tide PODs be used for? DOING LAUNDRY. Nothing else. Eating a Tide POD is a BAD IDEA, and we asked our friend @robgronkowski to help explain,” Tide tweeted on January 13 along with the video.

Tide was referring to American footballer Rob Gronkowski, who the company has asked to request people against undertaking the challenge.

The warning came after 39 cases of teenagers consuming the laundry pods intentionally were reported by the Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) in the first 15 days of 2018.

“Our laundry pacs are a highly concentrated detergent meant to clean clothes and they’re used safely in millions of households every day. They should only be used to clean clothes and kept up, closed and away from children,” a Tide spokesperson said in an interview with BuzzFeed.

“We have been consistently proactive in providing consumers with the right usage guidance and tools to enable them to use the product safely,” the spokesperson added.

Consuming detergent can lead to vomiting, throat burn, severe abdominal pain and poisoning.

However, it is not a new craze as the social media challenge has been going on for years. The first ‘Tide Pod Challenge’ was posted on YouTube in 2014. It was followed by teenagers posting videos of them consuming laundry pods and hundreds of memes and jokes floating on the internet.

As the challenge has generated a lot of wrath from officials and people, social media influencers are using the same platform YouTube to stop people from taking the challenge.

In March 2017, YouTube channel College Humour posted a short clip ‘Don’t Eat the Laundry Pods. (Seriously. They’re Poison.)’. The video that gathered more than 3 million views showed teenagers giving in to the pressure and eating the laundry pods.

“In light of recent news reports of idiot teens actually eating laundry pods, we want to make very clear that our position is the title of this video: DON’T EAT THE LAUNDRY PODS, you moron. Not even a little tiny bit, to impress your dumb friends or the internet,” the channel wrote in the description.

Here are some of the negative reactions to the challenge:

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