One jumps in front of a passing train drinking an unknown drink through a straw, another surfs while downing a beer, another relieves himself in a glass, which he then fills with beer and drinks (!), another downs his drink and jumps off a bridge into the sea, another climbs a tree, drinking from a different drink on each branch. There is no end to the videos that one can find on YouTube under the heading "neknominate", the new online drinking game that has been sweeping the US and Britain in recent months (with well-founded fears that it will reach our parts too...).
In short, players are asked to drink an alcoholic beverage in one gulp, while doing something dangerous, to film this madness and upload it to the Internet (mainly on Facebook), after first challenging two other friends to do the same in less than 24 hours. It is reminiscent of the popular ice bucket challenge, only instead of bathing with the bucket, users drink it, and it is not done for a noble cause, as in the other case it was to fund research into ALS (the rare disease that Stephen Hawking suffers from). On the contrary, reports link the game to five deaths of people under the age of 30 in England and Ireland, including a worker at a hotel in London, who consumed a bottle of white wine, a quarter bottle of whiskey, a small bottle of vodka and a can of beer.
Although drinking games, games that involve drinking alcohol, are as old as humans and alcohol, their spread in the age of social media is almost uncontrollable. Neknominate emerged in Australia in early 2014 and quickly spread to countries with high rates of alcoholism via Facebook. Almost simultaneously, another similar drinking game (Baijiu Challenge), in which users are also asked to show off their achievements online, became popular in China. However, when Facebook was asked not to allow the posting of videos and general content with the hashtag #neknominate, the platform issued a statement according to which "we do not tolerate content that is directly harmful, such as bullying, but behavior that some may find offensive or controversial is not necessarily against our rules." However, they called on users not to hesitate to report posts on the platform that they consider to be beyond the pale.
According to experts, the "disguise" of alcohol use in a game can have very negative effects, especially on the young population. Already the data on the problematic consumption of the substance in children in our country are worrying. According to the WHO, 30% of adolescents in Greece state that they drink an alcoholic beverage once or twice a week. The average age for boys who start drinking is 11 years old and for girls 13, while approximately 20% of adolescents admit to having been drunk more than three times in a year. In all three of the most common causes of death in the ages of 14-24, which are car accidents, suicides and murders, alcohol has a high involvement.
The highest rates of frequent alcohol consumption (≥10 times) in the last month among students (13-19 years old) are observed in the prefectures of Kastoria, Pieria, Evros, Halkidiki, Serres and Lesvos.
Source: kathimerini.gr
