Life

Leona O'Neill: Remember, everyone – the floor isn't really lava

Harmless fun can turn out to be anything but when taken to extremes, which is why parents should keep tabs on how far their kids are going with the latest social media dare craze, whatever it might be, writes Leona O'Neill

'The floor is lava' is an online craze in which players have five seconds to get off the ground or they'll be pretend toast
'The floor is lava' is an online craze in which players have five seconds to get off the ground or they'll be pretend toast 'The floor is lava' is an online craze in which players have five seconds to get off the ground or they'll be pretend toast

ON SATURDAY I took my younger kids and a trolley and navigated my way around the seventh circle of Hell, or the supermarket if you want to use it's Earth title.

It was more challenging that usual because every 10 seconds one of my offspring would announce loudly and dramatically that 'the floor is lava' and they would both clamber up on the trolley, or attempt to fit on to a shelf or indeed into a freezer to escape the imaginary red hot floor.

Once the five-second warning was issued, I would have to also balance on the handle of the trolley, removing my feet from the ground to stop from being pretend melted. It was fun the first three times, but the other 50 not so much.

After I had tired of all the needless exertion my daughter would announce that I was dead because I hadn't made an effort to escape the pretend molten lava. I told her that was fine and dandy with me, that it meant someone else would have to finish the boring task of shopping, pay for it with their own money then go home and make three different dinners for six fussy eaters who won't all consume the same meal.

Apparently this 'floor is lava' is an online craze sweeping the land. It sees children shout the alert, giving their friends, or indeed their poor weary parents, five seconds to get off the ground on which they stand or else they'll be pretend toast.

It's been happening all week in our house, with little people climbing up on windowsills and on sofas, falling off chairs and hurting themselves and squeezing themselves into cupboards and getting stuck.

But the trend has seen worse than that happen. Parents have been reporting kids darting out onto busy roads, climbing up on high window ledges and jumping on to car bonnets to play the game, with some hurling themselves into rubbish bins and mounting high shelves in shops.

The craze is sweeping social media, with children and teenagers posting videos of themselves hanging off high railings, off trees and up on high supermarket shelves and pulling down furniture on top of themselves in attempts to complete the mission. The crazier the climb the more hits it's getting online.

It follows on from the planking craze, which swept our kids up this time last year. That particularly stupid craze saw kids balance completely horizontally in a variety of different settings, the stranger the better, and capture it all on video. Children doing the challenge fell over bannisters and down stairs, broke limbs falling from high walls and crushed a multitude of furniture trying to out do one another.

This craze followed on from the 'deodorant challenge', in which kids sprayed deodorant on to their skin until it burns. The mission was to keep spraying for the longest time, even though the process burns their skin off. YouTube is full of videos of children displaying horrific skin burns, trying to out do one another.

And that challenge came in the wake of the 'salt and ice challenge' which involved putting salt and ice on the skin – mostly on the hand or forearm – and leaving it there for as long as they can. The salt lowers the temperature of the ice, thus making it colder than freezing, which leads to first and second-degree burns and effects similar to those of frostbite.

Whoever thinks of these challenges needs to take a long hard look at themselves. Kids embrace these types of activities because the self-preservation chip in their brain that can keep them from doing potentially dangerous things hasn't yet gained superiority over the 'must out do my friends at all costs' chip. That's why they laugh at those fail videos showing skateboarders landing on their face after a miscalculated jump while their parents look at the same video through their fingers.

Kids are always going to be attracted to crazes, no matter how ridiculous they seem to us grown ups, and social media opens up a whole new world of opportunities to get involved in these sometimes dangerous acts of stupidity. It's up to us as their parents, often acting like some kind of minder of mini-kamikazes, to keep a lid on it.