I came across an article about the “Nyquil Chicken” challenge on TikTok, which supposedly encourages viewers to cook chicken in NyQuil (a nighttime cold medicine). Apparently it went viral enough that the FDA felt the need to issue a public health warning against the challenge. A search for “Nyquil” now yields tons of results for articles about this. I’m sure Nyquil’s marketing team has never seen so much free press – nor wished more for it to go away.
While I appreciate the spirit of what the FDA is trying to do – protect the public from ingesting something potentially harmful – it got me thinking about the potential downsides of taking everything we see online and on social media so seriously as well as our ability to distinguish what’s real from fake.
The challenge itself may have gone viral, but videos of people actually cooking and eating it have not. In fact, the meme itself is many years old and resurfaces every so often on different sites. The fact that people are taking the claim of this “new trend” at face value without doing much research speaks to the general lack of digital literacy within the general public / media and the eagerness with which they bemoan the proliferation of misinformation (in this case, health misinformation) and begin again to call for regulations on tech companies. As Jeffrey Blevins, a professor in the Department of Journalism and the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati, said: “This is the kind of thing that TikTok could moderate, even though I think TikTok compared to other social media platforms has been a little more loath to do that. [...] The lack of regulation undercuts agencies like the FDA…”
There is definitely value in preventing the spread of misinformation; however, there is also a fine gray line between helpful regulation and harmful interference. As digital marketing continues to evolve, it’ll be interesting to see how regulatory bodies, the media, tech companies, and the general public respond.
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- https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124252556/nyquil-chicken-challenge-fda-warning
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/21/nyquil-chicken-fda-warning-tiktok-trend/
- https://www.prweek.com/article/1799725/fda-warns-nyquil-chicken-tiktok-trend-misinformation-battle-continues
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