Why do people take dares

Then the next kid lit his whole back on fire and got second degree burns. If they jumped off a cliff, would you?

Can you describe that moment or how you were feeling? Is there anything you need to do or say to anyone because of what happened? Speaking out respectfully to voice a different opinion is essential to real dialogue and intellectual diversity. Ironically, these kinds of risks can feel most scary, even though the reality is that not speaking out can have the most negative and long lasting consequences on both individuals and our communities.

Imagine what happens when we empower a young person with that kind of knowledge. Skip Navigation. Expand search Search. Most of us can talk ourselves into doing things we have no business doing.

We believe we have a larger problem. We need to demonstrate some kind of power that will impress our peers. For some young people, having a high tolerance in high school is impressive. But an pound girl who is willing to go shot for shot against a pound guy, even if that means she passes out on the couch fifteen minutes later, is now more vulnerable to a spectrum of bad things happening to her like people taking pictures of her and posting them online or sexual assault.

We want to embrace our inner stupid with other people. Get a group of teens together and one of them is bound to do something stupid or dangerous -- and encourage their peers to do the same. But in this modern tech-driven world, teens no longer need to physically be in one place to egg each other on. Social media can enable teens to succumb to peer pressure en masse. Parents can keep tabs on who their teen hangs out with on Friday night, but it's much harder to control their social interaction online.

Thanks to hashtags, social media dares have gotten increasingly easy to come by. Many are outrageous -- and dangerous. This week the KylieJennerChallenge sent a number of teens to emergency rooms across the country, a result of suctioning lips with a glass or jar to emulate the Kardashian sibling's pillow-lipped look. There's planking, a stunt in which multiple people lie face-down, "stacked" like wooden planks or on their own in random public places.

Think your car can drive itself? Try "ghost riding the whip. It's dangerous. If you like marshmallows, the chubby bunny dare urges you to stuff your mouth to capacity -- a choking hazard, doctors warn. If that's not daunting enough, there's the Cinnamon Challenge, which involves swallowing a spoonful of the spice without drinking any liquids to wash it down.

Teens can choke or inhale the powder into their lungs, leading to "dozens of calls to poison centers, emergency department visits, and even hospitalizations for adolescents requiring ventilator support for collapsed lungs," the journal Pediatrics reports. Social media aligns perfectly with the tendencies of the teenage brain, which is more open to new and novel experiences. Research has found that during teenage development there is an initial expansion of grey matter in the brain, which means neural pathways are plentiful and open to anything that could get feel-good hormones going.