Have you heard about the Any Song Challenge? Any Song is the Korean Singer Zico’s latest song and the Any Song Challenge refers to mimicking the Any Song’s choreography and uploading the video to SNS. Nowadays, it has been a big issue that many people, including celebrities, participate in the Any Song Challenge. In fact, many new challenges are created every day and spread through the SNS realm. Challenges are a dime a dozen and they are employed in a variety of ways with all kinds of goals. Let’s explore how challenges are used as well as their ripple effects.
  First, challenges are used for social goals. For example, there was the famous relay donation campaign, the Ice Bucket Challenge, for not only drawing people’s attention to ALS but also raising money for the patients’ medical expenses. People who want to challenge the challenge should pour ice water over themselves and upload the video to SNS while nominating 3 other people to perpetuate the cycle. The nominees should either pour ice water over themselves or donate 100 dollars to the ALS association. The thinking behind this unique challenge is that when the ice water hits their skin, it feels like the muscle contractions that ALS patients have to endure every day, and therefore pouring the ice water over someone induces some empathy for the patients who are suffering. As Korean and foreign renowned celebrities joined the challenge, it spread rapidly. According to the U.S. ALS association, within one month (July to August of 2014), the challenge helped the U.S. ALS association generate 94.3 million dollars compared to the 2.7 million dollars raised during the same period of the previous year resulting in a 3,500% increase in donations from one year to the next. Also, 115 million dollars were collected globally and used in ALS research and for ALS patients’ medical expenses. Thus, the Ice Bucket Challenge is well known as one of the most representative examples of a positive challenge with a social goal.
  Second, challenges are used for educational goals. For example, the international Bebras Challenge on informatics and computational thinking. It was held at Lithuania for the first time in 2004 and has aimed to improve students’ informatics and computational thinking by creative questions like ‘How would you change stone bridges to help a beaver reach its destination?’ In South Korea, informatics professors and teachers founded the Korea Bebras Association aiming to settle informatics education into Korea. As a result 7,203 Korean students participated in the Bebras Challenge in 2017. As one of the main goals of the challenge has been to improve students’ informatics and computational thinking, the organizers avoid any ranking system to evaluate the participants. Although the Bebras Challenge has not spread through SNS like other challenges, the Ministry of Education in many countries actively encourage their students to participate in the challenge. The main reason behind the fostering of informatics is that it will affect the core industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era. Nowadays, 63 countries officially participate in the Bebras Challenge and 6 countries are preparing to participate. In conclusion, the Bebras Challenge, a textbook example of a challenge with an educational goal, will certainly go from strength to strength in the future.
  In addition to exploring some of the uses of challenges, we should look at the ripple effects of challenges. Let’s begin by asking why people participate in challenges? According to the doctoral thesis Are You Challenging Me? The Roles of Personality in ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Participation, by Sean M. Bowman, a doctor at the Indiana University of Public Health, over 40% of the Ice Bucket challengers, participated in the challenge because of the social pressure of being nominated as part of a general trend. However, the challengers who participated in the challenge because of its pure purpose were less than 20 percent, which means social pressure and its ripple effect from SNS were the main factors of the challenge.
  On the other hand, some challenges have negative effects. Bird Box Challenge is the challenge of doing daily activities with a blindfold like the characters in Bird Box, the 2018 Netflix movie. The challenge spread through SNS and presented some dangerous situations, like tripping or bumping into a wall. Significantly, a 17-year-old girl from Utah, in the U.S. drove a car while blindfolded and inevitably had an accident. As a result, SNS platforms like Youtube banned videos of the Bird Box Challenge. Other nasty examples of dangerous challenges that serve as click bait to accumulate views, like the Pass Out Challenge where participants hold their breath until they pass out, have become a social problem.
  As challenges have both positive and negative sides, not only SNS platforms but also communities should implement the necessary measures or guidelines. Nowadays, there are lots of challenges, and anyone can dream up a new one and put it into motion via SNS. What then is my challenge to you? Let’s use common sense and stay within legal and ethical boundaries while we challenge the challenges or participate in other people’s challenges to pursue our goals!

By Yoo Seong-woo
sw38@cbnu.ac.kr