For the love of Jersey stop with the dumb TikTok challenges

There was once a movie called “Animal House” where a character advises, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.” Perhaps we can modernize that for the TikTok generation to say dangerous, screen-addicted and gullible is no way either.

How gullible do you have to be to take on any of these moronic TikTok "challenges" that never end well? There’s a resurgence of one that U.S. health officials are warning about.

It first trended in January of 2022 but after going away it’s been making the rounds again. The “Sleepy Chicken Challenge” involves cooking chicken with NyQuil. Pouring a bottle or so of NyQuil into a pot with chicken and boiling it.

The problem? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants you to know that boiling the medications found in NyQuil can alter their properties and concentrations in a dangerous way.

“Even if you don’t eat the chicken, inhaling the medication’s vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drugs to enter your body,” according to the FDA.

In other words, genius, you can kill yourself. Knock it off. Are you this bored? Are you so empty inside you’ll just do whatever a screen tells you to?

Ever hear of the “Blackout Challenge” from last year? Joshua Haileyesus died at 12 years old trying to make himself pass out choking himself with a shoelace. Other young children have died from taking on this TikTok challenge as well.

Icons for the smartphone apps TikTok and WeChat (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

It’s like this old-fashioned parent saying “If your friend jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” It was used to show a kid you don’t have to copy everything your friends do.

Turns out today that answer would be yes, they’d jump right off that bridge.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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