There seems to be a new social media challenge every week, with some being perfectly innocent while others are extremely harmful, to say the least. The currently viral “Hot Water Challenge” fits into the latter category.
One Indiana teen is now recovering from severe burns suffered after participating in the dangerous trend. Kyland Clark explained to Fox 59 that he and a friend had been looking up the Hot Water Challenge on YouTube last week, and his buddy decidied to try it out on him while he slept. Clark ended up in the hospital with second-degree burns on his face, back and chest.
“My skin just fell off my chest,” Clark told the station. “And then I went and looked in the mirror, and I had skin falling off right here and on my face.”
The prank, which includes pouring boiling water on someone while they sleep or daring them to drink boiling water from a straw, has already caused a handful of hospitalizations and one death, according to TIME.
An 8-year-old Florida girl died last August after drinking boiling hot water through a straw. Second grader Ki’ari Pope burned her mouth and throat, leading to a tracheotomy that caused her to have chronic respiratory problems. The night she passed, she told her family she couldn’t breathe and consciousness shortly thereafter.
