Facebook Fire Challenge

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Teens across the country are ignorantly accepting this odd challenge to inflame their alcohol covered bodies, before hopping into a running shower to extinguish their own burning flesh. Videos of the Fire Challenge are popping up all over social media, creating a virtual “Game of Chicken” as to who’s willing to try it next.  Interestingly, teens would likely never risk lighting their favorite outfit on fire, or putting a match to their iPhone or laptop as a “challenge.” Yet they are stupidly willing to light themselves ablaze.

The challenge has filled hospital emergency rooms with teens who are covered with severe 2nd and 3rd degree burns that will almost certainly leave a permanent deformity — or worse.  A 15-year-old from Buffalo, NY died while attempting the stunt.

“I just poured alcohol on me, and lit it, and it just automatically went and burst,” a Kentucky teenager told reporters after suffering 2nd-degree burns.  The teen said he saw the challenge on Facebook and YouTube and decided to try it, without ever considering the consequences or the physical aftermath once the burst of flames subsided.

“The pain was unbearable,” the teen said. “Literally after it got put out my skin was already blistering. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking, really.”

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For concerned parents and the medical professionals who are having to treat these self-imposed burns, the question is, why?

“The idea is that ‘I am very macho,'” said Houston psychiatrist Dr. Harvey Rosenstock.

Rosenstock said teens aren’t even considering the dangers, but are more concerned with showing off and drawing attention to themselves by posting videos of them accepting the challenge on social media.

“Unfortunately, you get people to view it and with the phenomenon of scale, everybody else wants to do it. ‘I can do what this guy can do’ and ‘I can even up the ante,'” Rosenstock said.