People are screaming of pain and it’s a direct result of people taking part in the fire-challenge, a dare game that has gone viral on social media where the participant voluntary set themselves alight by applying flammable liquids such as rubbing alcohol onto their body and filming the outcome.
As far as we can determine one of the first fire-challenge videos were uploaded in April 2012 onto YouTube where the user sets his chest hair alight. Since its upload the video has had more than one hundred thousand views.
It appears that in April 2013 a Vine user introduced the hash tag fire-challenge and it accompanied videos of users setting themselves alight.
What these kids do not know is the challenge cannot only harm them, but kill them. People need to use common sense which may be difficult for some because not everyone has common sense.
The challenge is to set yourself alight and extinguish the flames as fast as you can; however it rarely has a desirable outcome. We have watched almost a hundred videos on the Internet on this so-called fire-challenge and none of them was without injury, pain or even death. In Buffalo New York a fifteen-year-old boy has died after participating in the fire-challenge game. Reported in an online newspaper on the 24th of July this year he doused himself with alcohol and was set ablaze by his friends.
Apparently he was not near any water source and could not stop the fire quick enough and sustained serious burn wounds.
Even getting into water quickly can still leave serious burn wounds and inhalation burns can lead to suffocation.
Often people are posting challenges on various social media sites and other users are soon to follow, some of them ending in death.
Challenges like the #neknomination where you had to down an alcohol beverage and so forth also had its fair share of victims.
These challenges do not only affect children, but adults as well. However, children are more susceptible to these challenges to establish a point of hierarchy within their friends’ circle.
The choking game is still popular under many teens, although not always identified in time and correctly.
Teens would strangulate each other to the point where they pass out or get the feeling of being high. Some will go as far to tie a belt or a rope around their neck and hang themselves from
Statement issued on behalf of ER24 by Werner Vermaak