The popular squishy toy exploded after Caleb Chabolla put it in the microwave, Loyola Medicine said.
A 9-year-old boy in Illinois was hospitalized with severe burns after a TikTok trend inspired him to put his NeeDoh — a popular sensory toy — in the microwave.
Caleb Chabolla heard about the trend of heating the squishy toy from a friend at school and decided to try it on Jan. 20, Loyola Medicine said in a statement. His mother, Whitney Grubb, heard a “blood-curdling scream” as the gelatinous filling exploded on Caleb’s face and hands, it said.
Grubb took her son, whose eye had swollen shut, to the local emergency room, the statement said. He was transferred to Loyola Medicine’s Burn Center in the Chicago suburb of Maywood for further treatment and spent the night there.
They put “TikTok” right into the headline, but the story says:
I’m sorry this kid got hurt, but cramming “TikTok” and “social media” into the headlines seems like engagement bait. There have always been trends, rumors, and dangerous dares, social media didn’t invent that stuff.
Perhaps not, but they certainly enable such things to spread much faster and further than they would otherwise. And since there’s little or no oversight to what people post the harm is never checked. I’ve repeatedly reported posts on various social media platforms that are advocating fraudulent and/or directly harmful information. None of them have ever been removed as a result of those reports. As long as the content keeps audiences engaged, they refuse to act.
I mean the moronic trend to microwave this particular toy started on tiktok so the headline isn’t really that far off.
Kids have been have done idiotic things since time immemorial, just dumbasses on tiktok are incentivized now to amplify their dangerous actions to as many impressionable youths as they can.