CLICK HERE FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION
Online Challenges, Real-Life Consequences
How internet challenges affect children in Romania and what prevention programs exist?
One summer, I challenged myself to go swimming in the Ozana every day. It was what I loved most in the world in the Neamț where I grew up. Infinite fields, hide-and-seek in the dark, stealing corn for roasting. Childhood without boundaries. Two weeks before school started, according to a precise clock, anxiety would appear. I had nightmares, the fun was hollow, mornings grew cold, autumn filled our nostrils.
Those challenges had risks, but also the thrill of adventure. That hasn't changed—children today still seek a bit of danger in all the challenges they accept or generate.
But what has changed is the quantity of challenges and risks they are exposed to through technology and, especially, through phones.
Depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide—all have increased in teenagers in recent decades as "play-based childhood" was replaced by "smartphone-based childhood," argues Jonathan Haidt, psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation. Half of American Gen Z say they wish TikTok had never been invented, yet they still won't detach from it. It's the paradox found by the psychologist in his research. OpenAI has also recognized the psychiatric risks of ChatGPT.
"Will we adapt to technology or be deformed by it?" Haidt asks.
What will you learn from this article? What are online challenges, how have they evolved, what are the false alarms, but also where are the real risks and how can they lead to family tragedies? I gathered stories about human power to transform tragedies into community projects, brilliant youth who know what needs to be done if adults would listen, how prevention programs without "don't do that!" in the title work, and what important role we, the press, have. In short, I looked for solutions.
For this article, divided into two episodes, I spoke with people from 15 to 73 years old—from Gen Alpha to Baby Boomers—on three continents. And the answer to what works will blow you away: education!
You will NOT find out in this series what the dangerous challenges consist of, nor will you find visual information about accidents or suicide. Exploiting a drama by depicting it explicitly in media can spark curiosity and cause other tragedies.
Let's begin!
What is a challenge?
Simply put, it's about those online videos of people doing something difficult or risky, posted for fun or to encourage others to repeat what they did. Some can be fun; others are dangerous and lead to injury or even death.
I came across something interesting in a 2021 global report: not all challenges start from something real; some are pranks or simple hoaxes.
- Internet pranks are tricks created to make someone believe something scary that isn't true (e.g., "send this message to 100 people... or else...").
- Hoax challenges, like Momo or Blue Whale, are presented as suicide "games" started by a "villain" somewhere, whose existence was never proven. This information results from the contamination between fake news and partial truths spread through mass media; yet even so, they spark panic and lead to accidents.
What is the situation here?
First of all, I wanted to see if these challenges led to accidents here as well. So I sent requests to all 11 hospitals dedicated exclusively to pediatric pathology. Some replied that they do not centralize data on the cause of accidents, so they don't know how many were injured following social media challenges or prompts.
Two of them had some analysis:
- "Sfânta Maria" Children's Hospital in Iași began quantifying cases from the "Superman challenge" in 2024: there were 21 in 2024 and 12 so far this year. Also this year, there were 2 cases of tulip ingestion, probably related to the "tulip challenge." Doctors say "often, patients/guardians do not declare the reality" and that although they recommend psychotherapy to all, in most cases it is refused by the family, "who consider the situation a 'simple incident'."
- "Grigore Alexandrescu" Children's Emergency Hospital recorded only one period—Nov 30 to Dec 4, 2024—when they had 34 patients with injuries caused by the Superman Challenge. "16 boys and 18 girls with an average age of 14." Arm and shoulder fractures, some requiring sedation for treatment and even hospitalization.
I also wrote to the Romanian Police, who replied that in 2023-2025, 38 "Superman Challenge" type challenges were reported, and in the last three years there were 29 electrocution accidents of the "selfie on train" type, 9 of which were fatal.
The Police said they conducted hundreds of preventive activities and thousands of school actions and debates about "Superman/Paracetamol Challenge." I searched for these campaigns; they exist and were built with messages like "Avoid participating in dangerous challenges," "Do not be influenced by group pressure."
I will explain later why their effectiveness suffers and how they could find better solutions. Neither the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations nor the Ministry of Education has data on the causes of accidents involving minors.
Thus, I obtained only a patched map of the phenomenon—in the last three years, 136 accident cases related to social media were officially recorded.
We also know that half of children aged 7 to 17 spend 6 hours a day on the internet, according to research by "Save the Children." Additionally, the age at which children in Romania access social media has dropped significantly: 32% of parents with children aged 5 to 10 say their son or daughter uses TikTok.
Chucky and Bloody Mary in Buzău
With all the data in mind, I take a quick trip to Buzău, where several high school students from "B.P. Hasdeu" College, actors in the troupe called "3.14," have gathered in the media room for a conversation about their real-virtual world.
- "Me now, if I had a child, I wouldn't give them a phone before 12."
- "I'm thinking about that too. What social media has become now... Or at least not one with access to social media."
- "You can get into rabbit holes, so this social media thing and what it can offer is endless."
I’ve been talking for half an hour with Bianca, Dara, Teo, Maria, Sofia, and Ruxandra. David would also join us. They are students from 9th to 12th grade, children of the pandemic. "I only got a phone during the pandemic. I don't think I would have received it otherwise," says Teo, now in 9th grade.
They were between 5 and 8 years old when the world was shaken by the "Blue Whale" hoax. Back in 2015, when the story circulated that someone was challenging children to harm themselves, parents at a local school were petitioning to protect them, and a PSD MP asked the Ministry of Interior what it was doing to stop the game, randomly associating two teenage suicides with this fake challenge without evidence.
The Buzău students remember the fear they lived through then. "I was very afraid that just by hearing about it, I would want to try," says Bianca, now in 12th grade. "Yes, it was total panic. Probably that's why there was this attraction toward the challenge, because it was talked about so much and children are attracted to something wow and explosive and scandalous," says Sofia.
I learn from them about other challenges they encountered in the virtual world or in front of their apartment block: the challenge to inhale deodorant, swallow a lot of cinnamon, drink Mentos with Coke, the Chucky game, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary," or the apparently innocent prompt: "My name is Teresa Fidalgo, if you don't send this message to 20 more people, I will sleep with you forever."
"One day, I forgot to send it and I got scared. When I saw no one came to me at night, I stopped sending any messages," says Dara. The girl does not have a TikTok account and receives congratulations for it.
"I noticed a pattern in the people around me who don't have TikTok. They are the most intelligent people in my life, they do many extracurricular activities, they are very sociable," Bianca tells her. Recent studies confirm what Bianca observed—that there is a correlation between consuming these short videos and poorer cognitive and mental health.
- "I believe social media is an addiction."
- "100%."
- "Especially since doom scrolling."
- "I mean, I don't know how to regulate this, it affects my discipline and motivation a lot."
What kept them safe was the fact that their parents discussed it with them without panic. "They never spoke to me in a 'My God, how dangerous it is, you must never do that' way. They presented the problem more objectively than subjectively," says Dara. "You have to talk to a child just as you talk to an adult. I don't think we fully understand how intelligent children are and how much they can understand what's happening around them," Bianca adds.
- "We have a media education elective this year. It's the first year we're doing it."
- "Really? With whom? With the Romanian teacher."
- "Wow, how cool! What do you do?"
- "Well, we don't write anything, it's all practical. We look at materials and then discuss them, what's real, what's not."
- "I wish I could do it too!"
I return from Buzău on an evening train where adults and children scroll with sound on their phones. More than about the chaos we all contribute to in public spaces, it's about the noise within us, greatly accentuated by social networks. How do we make silence?
The same life, both online and offline
A week ago, around noon, ambulance sirens wailed one after another on Aviatorilor Boulevard. Isabela Zybaczynski, a student at "I.L. Caragiale" National College, and I waited for a moment of quiet so we wouldn't have to shout. Isa is also an ambassador in the Ora de Net (Net Hour) program by "Save the Children" and explained to me that the online life of youth is no longer separate from the physical one.
"For us, both are in the same place. Saying we must give up the online world is irresponsible. It's like telling us to stop interacting with people physically. Or to only walk and never take the car."
Ora de Net is a European project promoting the "creative, useful, and safe use of the internet by children." In Romania, it's implemented by "Save the Children," which says it has reached 650,000 children and 175,000 parents in 7 years.
They organize courses for parents, teachers, and specialists, a reporting line for illegal harmful content, plus a network of volunteers who pass on information. Among them is Isa, who leads information sessions from primary grades up.
The Bucharest student also participates in international meetings discussing how European legislation could be changed for child safety. So far, only Australia has managed to adopt a law banning those under 16 from social media. Tech companies challenged the law and then proposed their own solution—identifying children by their friends and likes, the same way they find them for ads, and thus closing their accounts. This solved the problem raised by many with this "digital age of majority" law—no further personal data collection is required.
In Romania, the adoption of two laws regarding the digital age of majority and child protection from harmful content, with fines for tech companies, received warnings from the European Commission as they add regulations beyond European ones.
Increasing the age of use to 16 wouldn't work much, Isa believes. Currently, we can't even control access under 13. Plus, there will always be FOMO—fear of missing out—and children will be curious. "A solution would be for apps to have children's versions that are better regulated, with informational content, and where short-form content isn't prioritized."
She has a trick she thinks others could use: she keeps a digital journal. "Every 10 clips I watch on Instagram, regardless of whether I stay for a second or 10 seconds, I turn off the phone and write in a journal what impression each clip left on me. That way I realize what type of content I should consume more," the student explains.
I tell her about my trick—the Minimalist phone app. Once installed, apps no longer have icons and can only be searched by name, and when you enter social media, it asks from the start how many minutes you intend to stay. It reduced my screen time by two-thirds. And let's not forget I am 40 with a developed prefrontal cortex. We'll get to the brain development part immediately.
Fear of being left out
Jonathan Haidt also spoke about FOMO keeping children there: children "don't want to be the only ones (who give up social media). If we could all give up, then most would."
A few girls with eyes on their phones pass by the path in Herăstrău where Isabela and I found a bench. Then a skateboarder. Further on, some boys play with a ball. Media literacy and education are needed, Isa concludes. And what we see around us: safe spaces with outdoor activities.
"All children who said they use social media or the internet excessively said they are bored, that they have nothing else to do," Claudia Oprescu, online safety program manager at Save the Children, told me. "And then, let's move the spotlight from online friend groups to the friend groups you meet with, talk to, go out with, and practice a sport."
Claudia receives increasing requests from schools and parents for their programs. "If we try to protect through excessive warnings and fear, this excessive warning can be interpreted as an invitation. What we try to do is an invitation to analysis, to breathe, to stop for a few minutes. We explain the mechanism behind it. That those views and likes bring money to someone." Not to them.
Big tech companies are today estimated at trillions of dollars. I personally cannot grasp how much that is, so I looked at country GDPs—NVIDIA alone is worth 4 trillion, as much as the entire gross domestic product of Germany, the world's third-largest economy.
"I wish no parent ever had to go through this"
"A 15-year-old girl died after a TikTok challenge," several local publications headlined last year. I wanted to see what happened there after media interest faded. Was there truly a challenge involved?
Shortly after her daughter's funeral, Corina* burned all her things. Out of pain. She burned all the manga and anime books, video games, notebooks. She still has a message exchange from the girl's friends; one classmate was even sending her prompts for suicide. A year later, the woman tries to come to terms with the idea that she will never know what happened to Maria*.
"I suspect if it was planned in advance, maybe she would have thought to leave us something, a note," the mother says.
It was October 2024, a day like any other. Corina was in therapy with Maria's younger brother; the girl had come from school and called her, saying she had eaten and wanted to go do a French project with a classmate. "And that was the last conversation."
She had finished eighth grade in the Călărași village where she lived, then went to high school in the city, and the first month had been hard. She felt she couldn't make friends. She spent more time on her phone.
The relationship with the phone was problematic in middle school too. "She was still a student of ours and the parents took her phone because they discovered she had entered a strange and possibly dangerous group. They asked for my personal support; I talked to her, told her about the differences between online and real-world friendships. At one point she stood up and told me: 'please do not insult my friends!'" recalls one of her teachers.
Until eighth grade, she had parental control on her phone; she couldn't access it from 10 PM to 7 AM. In middle school, she even went to a few "respiro" camps—camps for teenagers where you aren't allowed to use phones.
After entering high school, she no longer had restrictions; she spent a lot of time on Discord, playing Honkai: Star Rail or Five Nights at Freddy’s. Her parents were actually more relaxed because recently she seemed to spend more time with the family. "Either she was afraid to stay on the phone anymore, I don't know, she would leave the phone in her room and come sit with us in the kitchen. We told ourselves maybe she had matured."
And yet, somewhere she came across a suicide method she used. "The police gave us no clear conclusion; they only told us it wasn't a challenge from their point of view, meaning she didn't receive a message telling her 'do this or if you do this...'. Probably she no longer distinguished between games and reality," her mother adds.
"I wish no parent ever had to go through this," says Corina.
In Romania, it is unknown how many families have gone through this and need support. How many parents wonder how to get their children out of the world of phones or how to help them give up harmful behaviors. But concerned parents do exist.
"A very powerful car with weaker brakes"
In late October, I was in the same room with 21 parents from Bucharest looking for answers at the event "Emotional Wi-Fi: How to Connect with Your Teenager."
In a brightly lit room at the Bucharest Hospitals and Medical Services Administration (ASSMB), 20 mothers and one father listen to psychiatrist Ema Andrei and psychologist Elena Culacenco. The two also team up at the "Prof. Dr. Al. Obregia" Psychiatric Hospital, and tonight they are explaining to parents more about their teenagers' brains and how to support them.
In short, the amygdala, the "emotional brain," is developed, while the prefrontal cortex—responsible for planning, impulse control, risk assessment, the part "that tells you to wait a second"—fully develops around age 25. "The teenager is like a very powerful car with weaker brakes," Ema Andrei simplifies.
"It's possible that in adolescence they seek joy in more intense things. Last year they felt so good with mom and dad at the sea; now they want to go to Beach, Please! with friends. It's normal to ask; whether they receive is a discussion," the doctor tells them.
Psychologist Elena Culacenco shows them a video of the "still face" experiment. A mother plays with her baby, talks to them, shows them things around the room, laughs, and suddenly freezes any facial expression. The child tries to get her attention, seems not to understand what's happening to the mother, then starts to cry.
They talk about how a lack of affection or attention from parents can influence the child's emotional well-being. "When I can't name the emotion, when it's too strong, that's when this self-harming behavior can appear—they burn, they cut, they choke. Hence the need for emotional regulation and for them to have a model of emotional regulation beside them," the psychologist explains.
She elaborates on three emotions: anger, sadness, and shame. "We don't end up in risky situations when we are allowed to mourn, to sit with the emotion. But parents usually offer alternatives like 'don't cry anymore,' 'let's go to the store and buy something,' because they themselves find it hard to sit with that emotion," she tells them.
This is the third meeting of the Parent School organized by ASSMB precisely to reduce the stigma of psychological or psychiatric treatment. And the questions are many: "If they end up harming themselves, don't they do it out of impulsivity or curiosity?", "what do I do with the older teenager who is aggressive with the younger one?", "how can I manage things when they rip their clothes off?", "if I punish them by cutting off internet access when they're aggressive, aren't I teaching them to hold it in and then explode?", "how do I convince them to go to a psychologist?"
The last question of the evening goes straight to the mark: "You said the number of children in these self-harm situations has increased. Why?"
"The security we had 40 years ago no longer exists," psychiatrist Ema Andrei tells them. "There is a lot of competitiveness, a desire to perform. These are children who lived through the pandemic, when they didn't have natural experiences. Loneliness is a major risk factor. Both our children and we are tied to phones. An object will never help us with emotional regulation. Relationships are needed; connection is needed."
Later, I discuss at length with her what she encounters in the hospital, in the pediatric psychiatry department, and in research related to children and their relationship with social media. At one point, even at "Obregia," teenagers would come to the emergency room saying they wanted to harm themselves, but then doctors discovered they had only come because they were challenged by other classmates.
The doctor wants to emphasize from the start about phones that "they are neither villainous nor a miraculous instrument. Networks started from the idea of connection and people's need to stay in touch. And they do that."
Obviously, there are dangers, but what matters, Ema Andrei emphasizes, "is connection." "Emotional Wi-Fi."
"We connect with children to guide them toward safety. Limits matter, that's clear—time limits, for example, for how long children and teenagers spend in front of screens—but it matters much more that they know an adult is there, a person of support and trust."
Teachers and Journalists
I was working in television 14 years ago when a teenager died by suicide and the accusing finger pointed at the book The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé, which the girl supposedly read. There was talk then of banning the book.
Three years after that, in 2014, a Romtelecom commercial with Smiley and Pavel Bartoș, in which they climbed onto a moving train, was banned by the National Audiovisual Council. Doctors signaled that dozens of children had been electrocuted by trains. I remember doing a stand-up on the platform of Băneasa Station explaining the electric arc that occurs even if you don't touch the high-voltage wires. I blurred the footage filmed by the night reporter of the railway accident involving two teenagers. And yet, why was it okay to air them, even blurred? I wonder today.
"What is media? Is a pack of cigarettes with a message on it media?" journalist Bianca Oanea asks the teachers gathered on Zoom to find out how they can insert media education elements into their classes, whether they teach Romanian, Geography, English, or German.
They go through all the elements to look at to navigate through media information. "A railway employee cannot tell us about the evolution of diseases. Or an influencer. If someone is famous, it doesn't mean their opinion is relevant," Bianca explains. They then discuss how they can use journalistic texts for analysis in English and Romanian, and how in Geography, when learning about a new country, they can watch a tourism clip and extract what is opinion and what is information.
The media education program, held that Friday afternoon by Bianca Oanea, was created in 2017 by the Center for Independent Journalism (CJI) to combat disinformation. Since then, 1,000 teachers have followed it and 10,000 have learned from it through dissemination activities. Cristina Lupu, president of CJI, told me there is great interest from schools to bring courses in, but when they approach them, they expressly ask to tell students what they are not allowed to do on the internet. A kind of pill for a childhood illness.
CJI courses come with a broad information base to understand how media works, persuasion techniques and biases, message deconstruction, public rights, AI with miracles and dangers, and media education didactics. Teachers will know how to teach media education, just like the Romanian teacher in Buzău whose students were so excited.
"I remember, when I was little, I would ride a toy car on the roof of the house, and it wasn't a trend. It was that little child brain," Cristina says. "Looking back, I wonder how I didn't get hurt. And I didn't have access to social media. Every age comes with its own idea of doing things. The difference between me as a child and today's child is that now it's on steroids. Now you have platforms that strongly amplify this FOMO."
There is also what American journalist and author Nicholas Carr called "social contagion" in his book SuperBloom. Starting in 2019, children in the US, Germany, and Canada arrived at medical offices with strange tics, repetitively saying "Potato" or "Flying sharks." They had something in common—"they were fans of popular influencers on TikTok or YouTube who suffered or claimed to suffer from Tourette syndrome." The network "is itself an ideal vector for the imitative or sociogenic transmission of distress."
In their courses, CJI always challenges teachers to think what it would have been like for them as teenagers to have today's phones and possibilities. "If we carry on this conversation that they are immature and stupid and don't look at how we build contexts and spaces in which they can safely test their limits, we won't get far," says Cristina Lupu.
Traditional media doesn't help at all when it comes out with bombshell headlines about these phenomena: clickbait, with explicit details about how that accident occurred—information that makes the victims identifiable.
"It is important to talk about trends and challenges, but to also think why we are talking about it. Are we talking to get traffic and show what this generation is doing, or are we talking to fulfill our mandate to inform the public?" Cristina Lupu points out.
International practice says that topics about accidents or deaths due to online challenges should be treated in journalistic articles similarly to suicides. I’ve gathered an ABC of covering these subjects:
- A. We protect the identity of the minor victim who went through an accident related to something on the internet. We resist temptation even when other publications reveal this information. We always keep in mind that it's a child.
- B. We do not provide explicit details about how the accident happened, nor do we detail how the respective challenge is carried out. A UK study shows that even an apparently banal detail can have a positive influence: when the press stopped identifying precisely and describing exactly the place where suicides occurred, the number of cases dropped.
- C. We include information from specialists (psychologists, psychiatrists, school counselors, and educational experts) and services available for people at risk.
- D. Extra—We always remember that we practice this profession for the public, for us all to evolve as a society, and without the intention to do harm.
Games…
I walk through the warm air of the first day of November, after the play Dark Play. I feel like laundry put out to dry after coming out of a 1,400 RPM spin cycle. Two and a half hours ago, I entered a whirlwind of lies, a psychedelic delirium created by Nick, a teenager who finds refuge online, inventing identities, playing with others' minds. I wanted to get up and leave, but I couldn't. Is that how Maria, the student from Călărași, felt, caught in dark video games, crude dialogues with classmates, frightening animations?
Actor Matei Arvunescu, who surely burned at least 5,000 calories on stage, managed to terrify me with the alternation between a psychopath's face and that of a wounded child. Unregulated social media platforms put fuel into the powerful emotional engines of teenagers; they are accelerators of monstrosities. What pulls them toward the light?
I think of Isa telling me on that sunny October day in the park how absurd people's demand is for them to give up the internet: "It's like telling us to stop interacting with people physically. To only walk and never take the car."
Except that the online world is not just about friendship and fun; it's also that dark world of Nick or Jamie from the miniseries Adolescence.
To recap: I have an incomplete map of data from Romanian authorities regarding the number of children affected by social media challenges. Is it the tip of an iceberg or something sporadic?
We have some educational initiatives in Romania, except it seems that, instead of knitting the blanket from one end, we’ve started small pieces here and there. What should effective prevention programs look like? I discovered such initiatives in France, Brazil, and the USA. In the second part.
