Shocking new 'Facebook challenge' encourages children to vanish for 48 hours
Teenagers are disappearing for days at a time as part of a disturbing new Facebook challenge that thrives on worrying parents.
The “48 hour challenge” encourages children as young as 14 to simply vanish and cease all contact with friends and family.
The longer they hide and the more they are mentioned on social media, the higher they score.
One mortified mother said she feared the worst for her child, unaware that same grief was fuelling the sadistic game her child was playing.
“This is a competition and it's sick. The anxiety it left our family in is unspeakable,” the Belfast mother told local media.
“I was terrified they were dead or would be raped, trafficked or killed, but these kids just think it's funny."
She said her child was proud of his efforts as he managed to avoid being recognised for 55 hours.
“There was not even a moment of remorse when my child was taken into police custody and when the police brought my child home, I could see posts of selfies from the police car,” she added.
The trend comes two years after the similar “72 hour challenge” had parents across Great Britain worried sick.
Social media platforms like Facebook and more recently, Snapchat, are no stranger to dangerous and immature challenges.
A duct tape challenge saw teens taping each other posts that eventually saw one child suffer a crushed eye socket when they injured themsleves trying to break free.
While in recent years, major Australian cities have seen reckless train and bus surfing stunts nearly end in disaster.
Few Kool Cats are just one of several graffiti gangs putting their lives at risk by laying across active train tracks, hanging on to the back of speeding carriages and tagging Sydney trains, all in the name of social media fame.
Their actions followed the likes of Melbourne gang Sky High Idiots who made headlines in 2016 for their Instagram videos, showing half naked teenagers hanging off the back of speeding carriages, before taking their stunts to the next level and riding on the top of the trains.
