Pointless! Social Media Challenge Kills Massachusetts Teen

Question for you, Massachusetts residents: What is the deal with all of these foolish and (often) incredibly dangerous social media challenges that children and young people feel the need to participate in?

Seriously. It's a legitimate question. I'm no psychologist or psychoanalyst, but I just don't get it. Does one feel that by participating in these challenges one will become more popular or at least more accepted by their friends?

I guess I kind of understand the fact that many of us have a primal instinct for facing (and sometimes embracing) danger, but I don't know. It just seems like a lot of our younger people lately are doing incredibly foolish things. Often at the expense of their lives.

Take TikTok for example. Over the last few years, TikTok has featured some incredibly popular challenges. Many of those challenges were also incredibly foolhardy and dangerous.

I'm sure that many of you remember the Tide Pod Challenge. Teenagers would film themselves eating these laundry detergent pods while daring other teenagers to do the same. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a few deaths, two of which were children.

Are you at all familiar with TikTok's Blackout Challenge? This challenge required people to film themselves holding their breath for as long as possible. Result? Again, several people, including children, died from doing this challenge.

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Then there was the popular Benedryl Challenge which involved people (especially kids) taking huge amounts of Benedryl to try and bring on hallucinations. This challenge resulted in at least one death. A 13-year-old boy who took a dozen pills and immediately fell into a seizure.

And those are just a few of the more dangerous challenges. There's also the Nyquil Chicken Challenge, the Aerosol Challenge, and the Skull Breaker Challenge (the name says it all), just to name a few.

One of the latest social media challenges has sadly been named the cause of death of a Massachusetts teenager, 14-year-old Harris Wolobah of Worcester. The teenager died in September of last year, but the cause of death has finally been released.

According to CBS News, the autopsy revealed that the teenager's...

...cause of death was listed as cardiopulmonary arrest "in the setting of recent ingestion of food substance with high capsaicin concentration."

Wolobah had been participating in the "One Chip Challenge" which is very popular on social media. It should be noted that this was NOT a TikTok challenge, but a challenge created by chip maker Paqui. However, social media exposure certainly helped the challenge grow in popularity.

The "One Chip Challenge" involves a coffin-shaped box labeled "Carolina Reaper" and "Naga Viper Pepper" that contains one single wrapped chip. The tortilla chip contains the ingredient capsaicin.

According to CBS News and the National Capital Poison Center, consumption of capsaicin can typically lead to mouth and throat pain but may lead to far worse symptoms such as heart attacks or esophageal damage.

Wolobah was given a chip by a friend at school. After passing out twice, first at school and again at home, he was brought to the emergency room where he eventually died. The coroner ruled that death occurred as a result of ingesting a high amount of capsaicin.

The "One Chip Challenge" has subsequently been pulled from store shelves. For more on the story, please check out CBS News' website here.