Growth of Social Media Challenges

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Janice Johnson’s Yearbook class doing the Mannequin Challenge

Luke Avdalovic, Features Section Editor

The 1950’s college students may be the catalyst for the modern day social media trends, with their initial movement to see how many people can fit into a telephone booth. The difference between then and now  is that these days there’s  a platform to share these trends on a massive scale: social media.

Here’s a list of recent social media trends: Planking, Harlem Shake, Ice Bucket Challenge, Flipping Objects, Tebowing, Mannequin Challenge, Backpack Challenge, Selfie Olympics, Charlie Charlie Challenge, Crazy Clowns and the Salt and Ice Challenge. The next craze will probably hit the scene within the next month or so.

The high school generation stresses social media popularity and people contribute to these trends in attempt to gain more followers. For a very limited amount of people, this attempt is successful. At Vista del Lago, there were many posts of the most current trend, the Mannequin Challenge, including multiple classes participating such as Lisa Johnson’s Sports Medicine class, Janice Johnson’s Yearbook class and the Student Government class.
Senior Grant Bellis considers himself very active on social media. Although he hasn’t participated in the challenges, he still enjoys them.

“If one of my friends posts a video of one of the challenges, I’m going to spread it,” said Bellis. “It doesn’t do anything negative to me and most of the time I find them pretty funny.”

It’s nearly impossible to predict when something on social media is going to blow up. Senior Reed Rompel is less involved in social media, yet he still understands the growth of the these trends. Rompel does not have Twitter but still finds that the challenges get annoying quickly.

“For the first few people to do a challenge, it’s entertaining,” said Rompel. “But once it gets to a point where someone like me, someone without Twitter, notices how many people are stressing over them, it’s gone too far.”

Although there are different opinions about these trends, there’s no way to prevent them from occurring and having an impact on the high school generation. Senior Kiley Anderson has been involved with Student Government, and she knows how social media is an effective platform to connect with the student body.

“Social media is the one place we know that the majority of students will be every day,” said Anderson. “Might as well use that to our advantage. These challenges are a way to make the students more spirited, and that is our main goal in the end.”