Bored? Connect with nature rather than risky gizmos

We are all aware of social media “challenges”. Most seem harmless enough. The sari challenge, for instance. Or posing with your child for a ‘proud mommy moment’ challenge. Or the ‘what you cooked for dinner’ challenge. Then, there are the “tougher” versions. The headstand one. Or the ‘standing on one leg’ one. Some of us roll our eyes and label these “silly” and “attention-seeking”, but no harm done really. And then you have “death-defying” challenges, where foolhardy adults seemingly don’t care about putting their lives on the line for the sake of some virtual hurrahs.

Matters come to roost when dangerous challenges are picked up by children: with Internet access becoming scarily available to one and all (despite “settings” and “controls”), kids can easily jump onto bandwagons without realising how lethal they can be. And there have been countless such occasions.

Recently, a case came to our attention. A 10-year-old girl in the US asked Alexa for “a challenge to do” — because she was bored — on her Amazon Echo device, and Alexa offered her one: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.