Charisa Bossinakis
Medical experts have condemned parents participating in The Egg Crack Challenge going viral on TikTok.
You may have seen the videos on your ‘For You’ page, where parents recruit their toddlers to help them ‘bake’ a recipe that contains eggs.
Seems innocent enough, right?
However, things take a slight turn when the parent cracks the egg on the toddler’s head.
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Their reaction is almost always met with laughter, confusion or tears.
These videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on the social media platform.
But the trend hasn’t been without controversy.
In one video where two adults smash two eggs on a small child’s forehead, one user reacted: “She was so happy at the beginning…what a sad core memory you made for her.”
Another said: “I wouldn’t even do that to my friends as a joke why would someone do that to a little kid.”
A third commented: “Her little face at the end, man carrying on putting the egg on the bowl, she just wanted to make a cake.”
While another shared: “The light that left her eyes.”
But now many medical experts have also spoken out about the potential side effects on children, including bruising and spreading germs.
Dr Meghan Martin, a paediatric emergency medical consultant at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Florida, revealed in a TikTok: "I was not a big fan of this at all. This is not something that benefits kids in any way, and I honestly don't find it entertaining.
"We're literally smacking salmonella on their foreheads.
"It's harder to get a toddler to drink fluids when they've got a stomach bug or food poisoning, and so they're more likely to end up in the hospital for IV fluids."
However, it’s not just physical side effects.
According to Dr Don Grant, national adviser for Healthy Device Management of Newport Healthcare in Los Angeles, California, advised that in many of these videos, children are still at the age where they’re building trust and security.
"I also tell parents, as a parent myself, whenever you’re involving your child, you really need to be careful," Grant told Fox News.
He continued: "Our job is to buffer them and as a parent, for the sake of a video, I don’t see a gain versus the risk of this. Why would you as a parent put yourself in a situation where you're risking your child to [become] untrusting, shocked, surprised or shed a tear?"