Social media has become a frightening place, particularly for children who are unable to distinguish between real videos and those created with the assistance of artificial intelligence, leading to a variety of extremely dangerous challenges that they are willing to attempt themselves, including the most recent one involving a NeeDoh cube.

A 7-year-old girl was seriously injured and put into a coma after attempting to mimic a NeeDoh fad she had seen on YouTube and TikTok.
After seeing a video of someone doing it, Scarlett Selby microwaved her NeeDoh, an extremely flexible dough-filled funky glob popular among children, before freezing it.

Unfortunately, the toy exploded, “covering Scarlett’s face and chest with the red-hot goo contents inside the cube,” according to Uniland.

Scarlett’s father, Josh Shelby, heard his daughter’s frantic screams and raced to her, attempting to remove the stuff off her face and clothes.

“She’d frozen the NeeDoh cube the night before and the next day she showed me it was rock solid and was playing with it,” the father who was upset explained.

“She put it in the microwave. I was watching her and noticed her touch it to ensure it wasn’t too hot before pulling it out.

“Everything occurred so swiftly. I heard her cry, which was like a bloodcurdling scream. It had exploded across her chest, mouth, and chin.”

Scarlett’s father hurried her to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where physicians placed her in an induced coma to prevent her airways from swelling and closing.
“She was still screaming when we arrived at the hospital, and it’s about a 30-minute trip from where we live. Scarlett’s mother, Amanda, said, “It was terrible how scared she was and how much it hurt her.”

“I was panicked, devastated, terrified and heartbroken.”

The small girl was in a coma for three days and sustained second and third-degree burns. Scarlett’s parents are still waiting to find out whether their daughter will require skin transplant surgery four months after the devastating tragedy.

At the same time, they are attempting to raise awareness of the perils of social media content, as well as the possible dangers of the toy that injured Scarlett.

Schylling Toys, the manufacturer of NeeDoh, warns on its website: “Do NOT heat, freeze, or microwave, as this may cause personal injury.”
They collaborated with social media sites to ensure that any content relating to the misuse of their product was deleted from the platforms.