Would he dare pour a bucket of ice water over himself? And pinch his cheekbones on camera until a bruise popped out? Would he lick toilet seats just to show what he's capable of?

The presence on social networks of challenges or challenges that encourage users to take certain risks and share images is so common that children are very familiar with them. These viral contents combine two fundamental ingredients: entertainment and socialization.

These are fleeting and audiovisual contents. They promote an entertainment subject which is only required to have a good time. This favors a generally uncritical attitude that leads to ignorance of its meaning or its consequences.

Platforms such as TikTok are particularly fertile for such content. And their consumption patterns do not help reflection either: contents are presented in a very brief and dynamic way, result of a well-trained algorithm.

When it comes to viral challenges, minors pay little attention to the context of the content they are going to replicate and disseminate. It is common to hear them say that "it's just a game" on group and that they incorporate it into their leisure activities. We have found this to be true in our recent research among adolescents aged 11 to 17 in Spain.

Many viral challenges encourage the replication of trendy choreographies. The symmetry challenge, for example, invites Username to record yourself with a filter that allows you to see your face with both sides perfectly equal. Or the plank challenge, which asked the challenge to do sit-ups for 30 days, record it and share it.

It is important to note that the purpose of the challenges is not always mere entertainment. They can also be used in disinformative narratives, for purposes beyond entertainment, a reality of which minors are also unaware.

Challenges are not a recent phenomenon. One of the most memorable and positive examples of this subject of content is the Ice Bucket Challenge. In that action, people were encouraged to throw a bucket of ice water over themselves, record it and share it on social networks. In addition to achieving record participation, many celebrities and hundreds of people donated to research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

However, when asked at the aforementioned research some of the minors who knew about this challenge if they knew the reason for pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads, many stated that they were not aware of its origin or meaning. They simply saw it as an entertaining and trendy action on network.

According to agreement with our survey, the criteria by which children choose the challenges in which they participate are twofold: how entertaining it is and how much it matches their skills and competencies. The excessive interest in the content reaching greater acceptance among their peers may push them to devise alternative versions to increase the "scale of difficulty" that they associate, directly, with a higher issue of views and 'likes'.

To do so, they look for ingredients that make their contribution more original, eye-catching and impactful. It should not be forgotten that challenge is entertainment content about something highly topical, and therefore ephemeral. This makes it difficult to respond to the danger posed by a specific challenge , which appears and disappears quickly.

But how do you make challenges more appealing? Boys and girls -to a greater extent boys and girls- link the performance of challenges with a certain Degree of danger, the price to get followers and views. They see risk as a necessary and justified element to make the content more spectacular, which translates into a higher issue of reproductions.

In this context, dangerous is synonymous with showy and shocking. Minors tend to relativize risk in favor of spectacle and virality. Likewise, danger brings to challenge a plus of overcoming by proposing and innovating with more daring ideas that will enhance participation.

Sometimes, children feel a certain social pressure of having to assume the challenge in order "not to be left out". It is common for some to nominate others in social networks to perform the challenge. This can intensify their feeling of belonging to a group, but also the need for external validation. In any case, financial aid is not very conducive to a slow reflection on the implications of executing and sharing the challenge.

Although for minors this content is a pastime, it is clear that it involves risks of which they are not aware. Furthermore, there is no system for classifying this subject content by age, as there is for other formats (video games, movies, series, etc.).

This makes their critical capacity become core topic to face this subject of digital narratives. To help them acquire it, it is good to provoke conversations in which the content they consume and share is discussed. In this framework, ideally of trust, you can provide arguments that help them to reflect. Talking to them about the consequences of engaging in risky behavior is also necessary.