COLUMN: Triple Dog Dare

I'm sure I'm not the only who probably watched "A Christmas Story" over the holidays, and despite the fact I watched it a million times, it never gets old. For me, it is the quintessential holiday film, and I can most likely recite it word for word if I ever found myself in a predicament where I needed to save my life or win a $1 million.

This year I also decided to record and watch "A Christmas Story Live". It was cute and very well done, but it went on and on and after about an two and a half hours of a musical I find myself wanting to crawl under the kitchen sink to hide much like "Little Randy" does in the movie.

There is famous scene in the movie where someone is "triple dog dared" into putting their tongue on a frozen flagpole. You better believe that when I was a kid everyone in my class started using "triple dog dares", and there were several tongues stuck to poles.

A few years later, probably thanks to that lunatic Madonna, everyone I knew wanted to do "truth or dare" all the time. I'll have to admit that sometimes it did get out of hand, but never to the point my friends and I ended up across the Mexican border in a stolen cop car.

In this day and age it scares me some of the "dares" and "challenges" the younger generation is exposed to thanks to social media.

I'll be the first to admit that my generation might have been just as naughty just because of the fact we weren't always glued to a phone. That being said, it only takes a kid or teenager to see one video before something can go tragically wrong.

That's why it is really important to keep an eye on the dares and challenges that seem to go viral each minute.

I'm not talking about something like the "Saltine Challenge" where someone tries to eat a certain amount of crackers in a short period of time, I'm talking about things that are much darker.

I recently read an article about a girl who died several weeks after doing "a hot water challenge". This poor little girl drank boiling water for a challenge.

This is sad, scary, and unacceptable. A quick search will show many other dangerous challenges that are commonplace.

Teenagers have been known for centuries for not making the best decisions, but this has now trickled down to kids even younger. The young girl who was killed was just eight years old.

The water also includes throwing boiling water on people. I read a Time magazine article from August that told the story of and 11 and 10-year-old suffering severe burns.

With a teenager in the house, I know how important phones are, and also remember growing up doing a lot of stupid stuff.

I do however think it is important for teenagers to realize that younger people not only look up to them, they will also copy cat just about everything you do.

Technology is only going to advance, and unless "SkyNet" takes over the world, it's going to get harder and harder to distance ourselves from it.

We will have to learn to live with it, and the same can be said for adults.

If a parent is taking a stupidly posed selfie, thank the next time they grab their phone and see their six-year-old has taken the phone and done the same pose, they are setting a bad example. Not many are immune from this either, some just a little worse than others. I've checked social media twice while writing this, so I'm certainly on a soapbox pointing fingers, but society as a whole needs to be careful.

There are always going to be kids growing up, but it's important to look out for the really young ones and set an example of the right way to use a phone.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but perhaps if people spent a lot more time camping and in the woods with no phones, the world would be a better place. At least the younger ones could see real interaction every once in awhile.