As technology advances, so does the availability of communication and the ways people challenge each other. Recently, people around the world have been participating in various challenges that take advantage of our dependency on technology and also our unfortunate reliance on the approval of others.
The Internet has always been prone to negative influences by both the media and the gullibility of those who depend on it. There will always be those who are willing to participate in dangerous activities like the cinnamon challenge or whatever new craze it is. The Internet will forever be plastered with the likes of planking and all of the classic popular challenges that took the Internet by the storm.
In the past, such challenges were more or less innocent. Although somewhere potentially dangerous (such as the potential choking hazard of the cinnamon challenge), they do not compare with the intentionally hurtful challenges that fill the Internet today. Today, people are challenging the most recent body positivity social movements with challenges that will definitely attack the morals of those fighting the past ideas on body images.
A few of the newest "challenges" are ones that shame the bodies of women who do not match the shape of objects such as pieces of paper or iPhones. The A4 challenge is one that measures the waist of a woman against the size of a piece of printer paper. There's an "Iphone six legs" challenge that involves meauring one's knees against the length of an Iphone six. Needless to say, these challenges are ridiculous, especially considering the fact that no one's bone structure or build will be the same, let alone compare to an object created in a factory. Additionally there was also the "Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge" that swept the world of the Internet just weeks ago. Again, this was a challenge that assumed one set look was "right" and all others must comply with it. Obviously, this is not healthy for anyone who is influenced by the Internet because it is such an influential and dramatically informative place.
Moving on from these unfortunately ridiculous challenges, we must come together and accept each other for who we are and how we look. It is not fair to assume that we all could fit the same box, let alone that we would want to fit the same cookie-cutter box. As a society, we need to grow up and move away from these movements that damage the body images of those around us.
