Social media use among young adults is high, and challenges on this platform (i.e., people recording videos of certain behaviours while encouraging others to do the same) are extremely popular. Risky variants of these challenges portray high-risk behaviours that can lead to serious negative consequences and even death. With this project, we aim to better understand this relatively new phenomenon of (risky) social media challenges.
These social media challenges range from harmless (e.g. dancing/ice bucket) to very harmful (e.g. blue whale). Although some evidence suggests that these social media challenges are related to lower physical or mental health, young adults seem to perceive low risks and mainly stress positive effects in terms of identity expression and social support. Therefore, there is a need to investigate why people are motivated to participate in these challenges and develop effective interventions for more harmful challenges (E.g., by promoting self-reflection strategies or by highlighting potential misperceptions concerning perceive
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