BEWARE: This Facebook ‘48-hour challenge’ should not be played by your teen daughters, sons, here’s why

A new Facebook challenge has kids faking their own disappearance, photo from Getty Images

Teens engage in '48-hour challenge' where they fake their disappearance

The "48-hour challenge" which many have called the sickest social media trend ever, is where kids are allegedly pretend to go missing for days for points.



The game works this way: a child would purposely disappear for two days and when friends and family panic, the child earns points for any Facebook  update, share, comment or likes regarding his or her whereabouts. After which, he or she would reappear.

The prank is allegedly a spinoff from the “Game of 72,” which went viral in 2015 and had kids feigning their disappearance for 72 hours. “In a new twist on the so-called ‘game,’ participants get a higher score for each time they are mentioned on social media. That means that the ‘missing’ children are rewarded when worried parents ask Facebook friends for help to find them.”

The mother of one of the children who played the challenge, said,  “The anxiety it left our family in is unspeakable. … I was terrified they were dead or would be raped, trafficked or killed. But these kids just think it’s funny. There was not even a moment of remorse when my child was taken into police custody and when the police brought my child home. I could see posts of selfies from the police car.”

She called the game "sick".



“I’ve been told my child and friends are in the lead in this competition because they managed to vanish for 55 hours before they were discovered. It was just terrifying, and my child, who is 14, doesn’t seem to get it. They need a wake-up call, but I’m worried what that would be," she added.

Meanwhile, Snopes, a "fact-checking site" for urban legends, as it calls itself, has deemed the Game of 72 fake news, due to filmsy evidence which is a 2015 article about a girl named Emma who admitted to accepting the dare of the game deemed Game 72 or "12, 24, 72".

According to the Daily Mail, an 11-year-old girl who went missing (and was later found safe) inspired an online search party, which was mistakenly attributed to the 48-hour challenge. The girl’s grandmother condemned the game for any link to the case.

According to parenting expert Sharon Silver, creator of Proactive Parenting, “Tweens and teens don’t have full access to ‘big picture’ thinking yet — that part of their brain is still maturing,”thus the participation in the game.

Source: yahoo.com

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