606 Is Social Media Contributing to a New Trend of Burns in Youth?

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Burn injuries in adolescents in the United States continue to occur at significant rates despite the many different programs focused on burn education and prevention. With the introduction of social media earlier in life and more social media targeting younger populations, our burn center has experienced a new class of burn injury: risky behavior promoted or encouraged as part of gaining social media popularity. Adolescents are likely the most vulnerable population in this type of risky behavior because of their access to social media and their willingness and ability to attempt the challenges, but younger children can also be burnt as bystanders or recruited participants by older minors. This study seeks to understand the content in social media which may lead to this risky behavior in minors. Methods We performed a term search in a popular social media application (TikTok) which included “burn”, “fire”, and “fire challenge””. We screened the top 50 most popular videos for each word search. Only videos which included footage of a person or body part being set on fire whether real or through a hologram or filters. We excluded videos showing professionals use fire (i.e. cooks, entertainers, welders, artisans), video game characters, videos with no body parts on fire. Metrics included in the social media were number of likes and number of views, as well as date posted. Results Six hundred and twelve videos were screened (153 videos in each search term category). A total of 20 (3.2%) of videos contained a demonstration of a risky behavior with fire. The most common content was four videos (20%) were the subject was setting one hand on fire. Two videos were pranks involving burning the pranked. Sixteen videos (80%) involved real fire and 4 (20%) involved a hologram of fire. The “likes” on the videos ranged from 1.9 million to 189. The comments ranged from 0 to 11,200. All of the authors were young adolescents or young adults. The videos had been there from 6 weeks to 21 months. Conclusions TikTok is a fast way to disseminate videos a large number of viewers. The majority of videos with content of risky behavior around fire are of individuals which are playing with fire or simulating playing with fire and often have no other overt agenda but to want attention and popularity. A minority of these videos are purposefully spreading risky behavior around fire as a “challenge” or “trend” to be copied by other TikTok viewers.