TikTok is feeling the heat after Australian medical professionals publicly criticized the app’s harmful #SunburnChallenge trend. The hashtag, which encourages users to show off their most painful sunburns, extreme tan lines, and peeling skin appears to glamorize baking in the sun without any SPF protection, for the sake of #content. To combat this care-free approach to sun damage, TikTok announced its new "Tanning. That’s Cooked" campaign — an initiative that’s seemingly specific to Australia — which adds informational pop-ups to related videos in an attempt to educate users on the life-threatening ramifications of unsafe sun exposure, The Guardian reported. TikTok will also reportedly ban both the sunburn challenge and the similar #TanningChallenge, and pull content that mentions it.
The trend seems to have started in Australia, and initial criticism surfaced back in September — leading into summer in Australia and New Zealand. During a National Press Club of Australia event, Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) co-medical directors Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer spoke out against the TikTok challenge, with Long emphasizing the need to “change the cultural narrative around sunburn and tanning.”
