The scar: what is this dangerous challenge that appeared on TikTok that worries doctors

Getting a scar that blocks the cheekbone, this is the principle of the challenge born on TikTok which is all the rage among college students and high school students (the main consumers of content on TikTok). To accomplish this, you need to pinch your cheek very hard and several times with the index and middle fingers, applying a twist so as to create an intense red spot, like a kind of bruise on the face. On the Chinese social network, thousands of tutorials are already onlineand accumulates several hundred thousand views. A growing popularity that worries parents, but also doctors.

Because while this trend seems less dangerous than burning your skin with deodorant, for example, it can, over time, create irreversible damage to the epidermisas dermatologist Catherine Oliveres, a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, contacted by the The Huffpost :

“When you pinch your skin really hard, you break your tiny blood vessels. Especially if you do it multiple times”

Deposits of blood, sometimes large, that get lodged under the skin. She continues:

“If we do nothing, it can take months to disappear. It may even be permanent. A vascular laser session is required to treat small vessels. I haven’t covered it yet, but I think it will be coming soon. I don’t know if the parents will be happy to pay 100 euros. » Treatments not reimbursed by the Social Security.

What is the purpose of scarring your face?

Traumatizing the skin is not a trivial gesture. But for teenagers, it’s just related to a somewhat archaic sense of masculinity. Their goal? Make believe they fought and retain visible scars… And if the latter could use makeup to simulate this type of act of violence, they choose instead to create a real scar on the face to gain credibility…

Videos that won’t go away

Contacted by FM TVsaid the TikTok platform that it would not remove content showing how to create a “scar” which already number in the hundreds on the social network. The reason ? These videos would not be against their terms of use… Although theoretically, content highlighting acts of self-harm or videos trivializing suicide are prohibited.

To make the short sequences in question less visible, However, TikTok has promised not to recommend this content in the “for you” algorithm anymore. But is it really enough? The answer is obviously no since you type in your keywords “scar on cheek” we quickly come across the videos in question… We’ll have to do better than that TikTok.

An image credit: @mvlikoff_.