Teen 'Condom Challenge' Is Risky, Parents Warned

Even YouTube is pulling their videos
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 1, 2018 10:52 AM CDT
Parents Warned: Teen 'Condom Challenge' Is Not Safe
A teenager begins the "Condom Challenge" in a screenshot from a YouTube video. (WARNING: video link contains graphic content.)   (YouTube)

A teenager stuffs a condom up her nose and pulls it out her mouth, all on video to garner online attention. What could go wrong? That's what media outlets are asking after educators in San Antonio, Texas, visited schools to warn parents about the "Condom Snorting Challenge," Forbes reports. "Because these days our teens are doing everything for likes, views, and subscribers," Texas education specialist Stephen Enriquez tells KMPH. "As graphic as it is, we have to show parents because teens are going online looking for challenges and recreating them." Forbes asks why it's risky to inhale "an object made of latex rubber and covered in lubricant and spermicide," and digs up stories to make a parent shudder.

A 2004 report from India tells of a 27-year-old woman who gave oral sex to a man wearing a condom, swallowed it into her lungs, blocked an airway, came down with pneumonia, and suffered a partial lung collapse. Another medical report chronicles the woe of a 26-year-old African woman who swallowed a condom for the same reason and got appendicitis when a condom fragment got stuck in her appendix. Not to mention the possible choking hazard involved in condom inhalation, Inquisitr notes. In America the "challenge" dates back to at least 2007, when a YouTuber uploaded herself snorting a condom, but YouTube pulled the video for containing "harmful or dangerous content." As Kens5 puts it, "There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity, but the line isn't so fine when people snort condoms."

(More condoms stories.)

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