Cheese Challenge: Parents' Attention-Grabbing Social Media Prank Can Damage Where Kids Find Their Self Worth

While videos of a parent throwing a slice of cheese on their child's face may be a chuckle-inducing online trend, a psychiatrist warned those moments of laughter could cause a strain on family relationships and lasting damage to a youngster's self-worth.

The Cheese Challenge is the latest viral social media challenge to involve parents getting "likes" at the expense of their children. Before parents posted videos of them throwing cheese at their babies, they filmed themselves telling their kids they ate all of their Halloween candy and pretending their child was invisible.

"The fact that the sole purpose of the 'challenge' is to embarrass one's child and video it is concerning on its own," Dr. Obi Ikwechegh, a psychiatrist with Novant Health Neurosciences and Psychiatry Institute & Innovation Center in North Carolina, told Newsweek.

As parents, Ikwechegh said they're the most effective models of behavior for their children and wards, meaning, if they're putting so much stock in seeking approval via social media, their kids may do the same.

"If you validate that social media mastery … is the benchmark for self-worth and value, you set up the flawed ideation that the child may derive their own self-worth and value mostly from the validation they receive from social media," he said. "We are all too aware of the teen who has become depressed and withdrawn because the 'cute picture' their parent shared did not get enough 'likes.'"

When it comes to parents sharing their children's lives on social media, Ikwechegh explained that the overarching problem is the issue of privacy and the potential to open kids up to harmful, unwanted feedback. The intention may be to get an innocent laugh, but as has been demonstrated repeatedly on social media, the conversation can quickly turn negative.

cheese challenge viral social media worth value
This photo illustration taken on March 22, 2018, shows a woman looking at Social Networking applications Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Twitter, Messenger and Linkedin on a smartphone in Kuala Lumpur. While many parents use social... MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

The psychiatrist explained negative feedback on social media can cause children to feel stressed and even act out in spaces such as schools, camps and sports settings. He added that along with having an impact on the child as an individual, social media "challenges" can also disrupt the child's relationship with their parent by fracturing trust and dependence dynamics.

Previous generations' childhood memories were reserved for the occasional screening of a home video or the dusting off of a photo album. However, now that everyone's lives have become more public, Ikwechegh said, data harvesting immortalizes posts before a young person can choose the terms of their social media engagement.

"Everyone has those childhood and teenage pics that are not too flattering," Ikwechegh noted, acknowledging a photo of his nine-year-old self dressed in an Elvis Presley-style velvet suit. "My 'embarrassing' picture is buried in my mother's frayed picture book where she determines who sees it, while the post on social media is out of the child or teen's control."

If the past is any predictor of the future, social media challenges will continue to pop up and at times, a parent's internet fame will come at the expense of their child. As a guardian of a child's emotional wellbeing, Ikwechegh said before posting, its best parents ask, "How will your child react to that 'funny video?'"

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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Jenni Fink is a senior editor at Newsweek, based in New York. She leads the National News team, reporting on ... Read more

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