The Latest Viral Challenge Treasure Valley Parents Need to Worry About

If you're a parent of a teenager, does it seem like trying to keep up on the latest viral challenges your son or daughter might get wrapped up in is almost a full time job?

First there was the Tide Pod Challenge where young adults were eating laundry detergent. More recently, the Bird Box Challenge where one teen caused an accident trying to drive with the windows of their vehicle completely blacked out. When you read how silly these challenges are, you really hope that your kids are smart enough to not participate.  At the same time, you want to be a good parent so having a conversation with about how dangerous they really are isn't a waste of time.

Well, there's a new challenge to add to your radar! According to multiple news outlets, it's called the "48-Hour Missing Challenge." Teens dare a friend to go avoid going home/cut off contact with family for 48 hours to see if their disappearance generates a missing person's post for them on social media. It's a sad cry for attention that can pose a real problem for our local law enforcement if it takes off.

Missing child reports are taken very seriously and if law enforcement is busy responding to a fake disappearance, it's taking away valuable resources from situations where people really are in trouble. That's why it's so important to reinforce to your teens that challenges like this are a bad idea to get wrapped up in.

So far, there's been no reported instances of the challenge happening in the Treasure Valley, but with the release of "Abducted in Plain Sight" parents are a little on edge.  The film highlighted a Pocatello girl who was kidnapped not once, but twice by the same man in the 1970s.