On Second Look, Calling Snorting Condoms a 'Fad' Seems a Stretch

Throughout time, young people have engaged in some pretty stupid activities. The big difference now is that teens are doing stupid activities to gain instant media fame/shame. Like eating Tide Pods, because that’s worth dying for, apparently.

Yesterday, we heard teens had reportedly moved on from that and embraced a new challenge: condom snorting.

Yes, you read that right. Condom. Snorting.

According to Fox News, they snort the condom up their nose, down their throat, and pull it out of their mouths.

Bruce Y. Lee, an associate professor of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote about the challenge at Forbes. He stated, of course, that the only things that should go up one’s nose are air and medications designed to be inhaled in such a way. “Otherwise, anything else that goes up your nose can damage the sensitive inner lining of your nose, cause an allergic reaction, or result in an infection,” Lee argued.

However, this challenge seems to have not been too prevalent, or even new, prior to yesterday’s viral headlines.

Here’s a video from 2013 of someone attempting the “challenge”:

According to this video, there just isn’t been much evidence that many teens are doing this:

A quick search of YouTube shows that this video is probably right. Most videos that come up under the term “condom snorting” are reactions or news reports covering yesterday’s viral stories.

That doesn’t mean there’s no reason to be concerned, however. I bet plenty of kids race home from school today to do it thanks to all the media attention. Teens do stupid things — let’s not encourage them by helping start a trend in the first place.