Culture

No, Teens Are Not Actually Snorting Condoms Through Their Stupid Noses

Are the youth BACK at it again?

by Patrick Lenton  3 April 2018
Condom Challenge

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Clutch your pearls and search your sullen son’s room, because the teens are at it again with another dangerous trend for the YouTubes. This time, it’s being widely reported that youth are making videos of themselves snorting condoms through their nose and pulling them out of their mouths as part of the so-called “Condom Challenge”.

Except, they’re actually not — it’s just a big boomer media scare campaign hoping to capitalise on rogue youth doing weird shit, like with the whole Tide Pod challenge nonsense. But while the Tide Pod challenge actually had some good precedence behind it, the Condom Snorting Challenge has mostly been pulled out of thin air, much like a well-lubricated prophylactic through an adolescent’s nasal passage.

Related
Junk Explained: What The Hell Are "Tide Pods" And Why Are People Eating Them?

The challenge seems to have started when big outlets like Fox News wrote about a dangerous new trend, where “teens are taking on an even grosser challenge in pursuit of Internet fame.”

“Health authorities warn that the new ‘game’ poses a real risk and can kill,” they write, with vast gravity. Do you know where YOUR children and YOUR box of unused condoms are right now?

Many outlets followed suit, linking back to various YouTube videos to support their story. The videos look to actually be real, somewhat stomach-curdling attempts at the challenge,  however, these stories are several years out of date according to Snopes.com.

‘The vast majority of condom snorting videos we found in a YouTube search were at least a year old,” they write. “Most dated from 2013, with a few going all the way back to 2007.”

So, while there is a grain of truth linked to the so-called Condom Snorting Challenge (not to be confused with the much more wholesome ‘Condom Challenge‘) it looks like mostly the story here is another desperate attempt to make fun of youths and get another Tide Pod phenomenon going. People have fallen for the bait, hook line and sinker.

That said, much like with Tide Pods, anyone who does decide to do this challenge should be warned that, weirdly, snorting a condom through one’s breathing tubes can lead to severely negative health consequences.

“The condom could easily get stuck in your nose or your throat, blocking your breathing or causing you to choke,” wrote Bruce Y. Lee in Forbes, adding that “anything else that goes up your nose can damage the sensitive inner lining of your nose, cause an allergic reaction, or result in an infection.”

So, yeah TL;DR — teens probably aren’t snorting condoms, and if they do start to do it, they probably shouldn’t. Get a job, condom teens!

Meanwhile, let’s enjoy the latex moral panic.