DAYTON — A mom wants other parents to know about a social media trend that left her daughter burned.
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Dr. Alice Fagin is a surgeon at Shriners Children’s Ohio.
“We deal with all pediatric burns from age birth to 21 years old in Dayton and its surrounding states and counties and also internationally,” Fagin said.
Lately, she’s been treating patients after they’ve come in with burns from NeeDoh cubes, a sensory toy filled with gel.
“I’ve had two in the last week,” she said.
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Just this week, Loyola Medicine in Chicago said that in the last two months, they’ve seen four patients come in with burns from a NeeDoh cube.
The toy itself has no problems, but there’s a TikTok trend going around that encourages kids to put the gel toys in the microwave to make them more pliable since they firm up over time.
But this causes them to explode, leading to significant burns like the ones Fagin’s seen.
“I can tell you, this is just the most recent of a long, long-standing tradition of poor decision-making because of TikTok trends. I can give you at least three other ones that I have gotten lots of patients from,” she said.
Fagin said this is a good reminder for parents to have discussions with their kids about whether trends they see on social media are a good idea.
“And not only kind of re-address what they’re watching overall, but also some of those higher-level decision making of what’s an appropriate risk to take and what just doesn’t make sense,” Fagin said.
One of the two burn patients from this social media trend Fagin has seen in the last week is a 13-year-old girl.
Her mother said the following in a statement to News Center 7:
“She did what most teens and children see online and didn’t think there would be any harm. Please talk to your kids about not copying things they see online. I’m sharing this so no other family has to go through something like this. We are lucky and very blessed that my daughter’s injuries were not worse than they are. And we are so thankful to the physicians at Shriners Children’s for their quick care of my daughter.”
Shriners Children’s said they have seen patients coming in with burn injuries like this at all four burn centers across the country within the last two weeks.
More information on burns can be found here.
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