Several Teens Reported Missing After Playing 48-Hour Challenge On Facebook

If you are a parent of a teenager or if you know someone who is, listen up. There is an alarming new trend in social media that’s been resulting to several cases of missing teens as of late.

It’s called the 48-Hour Challenge and it requires participants of the game to voluntarily “go missing” for two days. All for the purpose of finding out if their friends and family members will make social media posts about them.

Parents are understandably outraged about the 48-Hour Challenge.

It’s definitely not a laughing matter and many parents are not happy about it.

In a social media post, Jimmy Watts warned fathers and mothers to warn them about the craze.

Watts wrote:

“Message to all parents. It’s called a 48-Hour Challenge where kids go missing for 48 hours and whoever gets the most social media hits wins the game.”

Authorities aren’t taking things lightly either, especially since they keep receiving reports about missing teens.

Meanwhile, Detective Lee Tuttle from the CMPD’s Missing Persons Unit said in an interview:

“It’s disturbing because it’s something we take so seriously, and for someone to take it as a prank or a joke is very alarming.”

The officer is encouraging parents to tell their teens “how serious that being missing is, and how big a deal it really is because of the emotional and physical strain on families, and then the resource strain on a police department such as ours.”

The 48-Hour Challenge is said to have originated in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, it has now spread to different parts of the world.

Watch the video report by WXYZ Detroit below to learn more about it:

If you have a teenage son or a daughter, be sure to sit down with them and explain to them why this crazy new trend isn’t exactly a game worth-playing.