![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/01\/CR-Appliances-Inline-Laundry-Pods-And-The-Elderly-06-17-2-v2-e1516730958593.png\")
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My gut reaction was that nobody is actually<\/em> eating the freaking Tide Pods.<\/p>\n Despite the explosion of jokes<\/a>\u2014yes, mostly just jokes\u2014about eating detergent packets, sociologists have long known about media-fueled cultural panics about problems that aren’t actually problems. Joel Best’s groundbreaking research on these cases is a classic example. Check out these short video interviews with Best on kids not really being poisoned by Halloween candy<\/a> and the panic over “sex bracelets.”<\/a><\/p>\n [youtube]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Bav01pAZrNw[\/youtube]<\/p>\n In a tainted Halloween candy study, Best and Horiuchi<\/a> followed up on media accounts to confirm cases of actual<\/em> poisoning or serious injury, and they found many cases couldn’t be confirmed or were greatly exaggerated. So, I followed the data on detergent digestion.<\/p>\n It turns out, there is a small<\/em> trend. According to a report<\/a> from the American Association of Poison Control Centers,<\/p>\n …in 2016 and 2017, poison control centers handled thirty-nine and fifty-three cases of intentional exposures, respectively, among thirteen to nineteen year olds. In the first fifteen days of 2018 alone, centers have already handled thirty-nine such intentional cases among the same age demographic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That said, this trend is only relative to previous years and cannot predict future incidents. The life cycle of internet jokes<\/a> is fairly short, rotating quickly with an eye toward the attention economy. It wouldn’t be too surprising if people moved on from the pods long before the panic dies out.<\/p>\nEvan Stewart<\/a> is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website<\/a>, or on BlueSky<\/a>.<\/i> <\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My gut reaction was that nobody is actually eating the freaking Tide Pods. Despite the explosion of jokes\u2014yes, mostly just jokes\u2014about eating detergent packets, sociologists have long known about media-fueled cultural panics about problems that aren’t actually problems. Joel Best’s groundbreaking research on these cases is a classic example. Check out these short video interviews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":72224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[252,140,23647],"class_list":["post-72222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-healthmedicine","tag-internet","tag-social-construction-social-problems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/01\/CR-Appliances-Inline-Laundry-Pods-And-The-Elderly-06-17-2-v2-e1516730958593.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72222"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72228,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72222\/revisions\/72228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}