Culture

Junk Explained: What Is The Milk Crate Challenge And Why Are So Many Doctors Against It?

With hospitals already inundated with COVID patients, doctors are desperately warning against the Milk Crate Challenge.

by Michelle Rennex  27 August 2021
Milk Crate Challenge Explainer Doctors

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Every few years, the internet comes up with a wildly dangerous trend that floods social media for a few weeks, then disappears into the abyss.

In 2012, people were giving themselves third-degree burns with the Salt and Ice Challenge. In 2014, teens were doing the “Pass Out” challenge to test whether they could collapse into unconsciousness in under 30 seconds. And in 2018, kids started eating detergent in the form of Tide Pods.

But today, people are breaking their backs, ribs, and wrists with the Milk Crate Challenge.

What Is The Milk Crate Challenge?

Across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you may have seen people taking nasty falls while climbing a pyramid of milk crates — and that’s basically what the Milk Crate Challenge is.

The crates, assembled like a set of steps going up and then directly back down are, as expected, not very stable. Hence, why the whole thing is such a challenge.

While it may look simple, a lot of balance and core strength is needed to reach the seven-crate peak. But over the last week, people have upped the ante by adding extra elements to the challenge.

Take this woman who successfully completed the Milk Crate challenge in heels, for example. Or this soon-to-be-father who utilised milk crates to help with his unborn child’s gender reveal.

How Did The Milk Crate Challenge Start?

The concept of walking across a stack of milk crates actually dates back to 2011, when JoyRidersTV Bonus Footy posted a video titled ‘Guy falls off six milk crates’.

As the title suggests, the 25-second-long video shows a man falling off six milk crates. But instead of the crates being arranged in a tight pyramid, they were set up crate-width apart in ascending height. This made the challenge a whole lot harder than what we have today as the poor soul in the video had to sprint across and jump up to make it across the stack of crates.

But when it comes to the modern version of the Milk Crate Challenge, the trend actually started on August 1 when Facebook user Billy Joe uploaded two failed attempts of people trying to walk across a mountain of crates. The post received 39,000 shares.

Two weeks later, again on Facebook, Jordan Browne and Kenneth Waddell shared more footage of people failing to make it up the crate steps where the challenge gained even more attention.

Reposting a TikTok made by @taylorxlauren, six people falling over the plastic boxes managed to garner 4.7 million views, which inspired others to attempt the challenge that appeared to be deceptively easy. And in the last week, countless videos of people falling in the most painful ways have flooded social media.

The Milk Crate Challenge got so popular that it was even spoken about on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where guest host Stephen A. Smith shared how dumb he thought the trend was earlier this week.

“I challenge anybody to find people dumber than these people [doing the Milk Crate Challenge],” said Smith. “First, you drink the milk from the crates to get strong bones, then you fall off the crates to break them?”

“We’re all so worried about COVID, but TikTok is what’s going to kill us.”

Is The Milk Crate Challenge Actually Dangerous?

If you’ve seen Milk Crate Challenge videos land on your social feeds, then you know some of the falls people have taken have been pretty gnarly.

TikTok even disabled the search for #cratechallenge because of the potential dangers the plastic boxes could cause. Before being wiped from the platform, videos under the hashtag had already amassed over 75 million views.

TikTok states that they disabled the search because the app “prohibits content that promotes or glorifies dangerous acts” and guidelines note that the app does “not allow content that depicts, promotes, normalises, or glorifies such behaviour, including amateur stunts or dangerous challenges”.

“We remove videos and redirect searches to our Community Guidelines to discourage such content,” TikTok said in a statement. “We encourage everyone to exercise caution in their behavior whether online or off.”

Despite false claims swirling online that one woman died in Texas after “breaking her legs” when participating in the challenge, there have already been a few reports of broken bones as a result of the craze. In New Jersey, one person sustained several fractured ribs and the Atlanta area has seen at least two people with broken or fractured bones.

Doctors believe that it’s now only a matter of time before someone sustains a pretty serious injury from a challenge fall.

“The Milk Crate Challenge is very dangerous, and we are seeing many orthopaedic injuries as a result of the falls,” Dr Shawn Anthony, an orthopedic surgeon from New York, told TODAY. “Injuries can include broken wrists, shoulder dislocations, ACL and meniscus tears, as well as life-threatening conditions like spinal cord injuries.”

Dr Anthony even claimed that the falls sustained during the Milk Crate Challenge are “perhaps even worse than falling from a ladder”.

“It’s very difficult to brace yourself from the falls I’ve seen in these videos,” Dr Anthony told The Washington Post. “They’re putting their joints at an even higher risk for injury.”

Dr Vonda Wright, an orthopaedic surgeon from Atlanta, agrees that the Milk Crate Challenge has the potential to be one of the most dangerous internet challenges yet.

“This is probably the one that I’ve seen that has the highest potential for bodily injury that will take people out not just of their daily lives but could have lifelong implications,” Dr Wright told NBC. 

But beyond the physical issues that can arise from the Milk Crate Challenge, at a time where ICUs are reaching capacity as the Delta variant of COVID ramps up around the world, filling up hospitals with even more potential patients isn’t an ideal situation either.

“Emergency rooms across the country are already overcrowded and elective surgeries are being delayed or postponed due to lack of hospital beds,” explained Dr Anthony. “This social medial challenge puts unnecessary additional stress on our health system and health care providers.”

So there you have it, that’s the Milk Crate Challenge. Now, please don’t do it.

Michelle Rennex is a senior writer at Junkee. She tweets at @michellerennex.