It seems kids and teens can’t get enough of viral internet challenges and all they have to offer — including a shot at internet fame and some serious bodily harm. Last year, the tripping jump challenge made the rounds, resulting in hospital visits, suspensions, even lawsuits. Then earlier this year, teens took on the challenge of drinking copious amounts of food coloring to turn their urine an unnatural color.
And now they’re at it again.
Yes, you read that right, teens are taking to TikTok to document their journey by turning their urine blue. The trend is allegedly tied to TikTok user Colty (@coltyy), who drank blue coloring for 10 days. He cut out all liquids from his diet except for water loaded with blue food coloring.
In the first TikTok video of his series, he stated, I’ll be drinking blue food coloring, and only blue food coloring. From what I’ve read online, by the fifth day the color of my pee will be blue.”
Every day, he would empty an entire dropper of blue food coloring into a glass of water. By the time his Day 10 video was posted, he explained all of the unexpected side effects of his experiment. More than just his urine turned blue, with a blue tinge being found in his poop, hair and skin.
@coltyy Day 1/5 of drinking blue food coloring! 😂💧Also it’s harmless guys don’t worry! 😊
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Colty had 2.4 million followers and was verified on TikTok when this started. He now has 8.2 million, the videos in this series are still live, and it’s now being posted on various social media platforms — making his potential reach very large. He claimed his experiment was completely safe (a claim that is self-backed). TikTok has since marked the video as unsafe. Colty’s videos are now tagged with “The action in this video could result in serious injury.”
Just how safe is the up and coming trend? Artificial food coloring is known to cause health problems in both children and adults. Yellow no. 5 and Yellow no. 6, which are the second and third most popular food colorings, have been attributed to causing ADD and ADHD. Yellow no. 5 can also induce an allergic reaction in one out of every 10,000 individuals, according to the FDA.
While it’s not catching on like a crazy TikTok challenge, it is worth keeping an eye on this trend. Check out this video from InformOverload on YouTube explaining more of the dangers.
