Written By: Sakura Snyder, Staff Writer
ENGAGING: The ice bucket challenge makes its return, this time with a different purpose.
In late April, the average experience of scrolling through shared Instagram stories and TikToks began consisting primarily of this: a verbal mantra of nomination and a splash of cold water dumped onto a peer’s head. After initially trending in 2014, the tradition of pouring ice water onto someone clearly made its return after more than 10 years. However, the purpose of the challenge changed—while in 2014, the ice-bucket challenge was designed to promote awareness for ALS, it had now adopted a different name and meaning. It became known as the #SpeakYourMIND ice bucket challenge, created with the intention to raise awareness about mental health. Different students at Poly were asked to share their feelings and experiences about the revival of the ice bucket challenge.
For some students, it took time to get used to the idea and premise of the challenge, such as Melody Romero (12). “I [initially] thought that people were only doing it for the trend,” she explains. After a while, Romero “became more open to it and wanted to spread more awareness on the actual topic.” She wanted to educate people more specifically about the cause of the trend, and when her time came to contribute her own part to the challenge, she emphasized that she attached the challenge’s official link to her video and went into further detail about its purpose.
Other students were overall approving of the challenge. Maddox Magana (12) thought it was overall “interesting to bring back an old trend in order to revive discussion for mental health awareness,” especially on topics that don’t get talked about much. Because he believes that the importance of mental health is something that always gets brushed over, he felt that it was “great to see everybody else’s involvement.” Mattthew Romero (12) also thought that it was “a good way of raising mental health awareness,” as it allowed for a more open and active discussion in talking about mental illness in a way that could be spread throughout the community. With the interesting technique of pouring ice water onto one’s head, and nominating other people for the challenge, he thinks that it was able to bring together many different audiences for one cause.
Throughout the frenzy of creating clips and videos for the challenge, it is important to remember what the #SpeakYourMIND Ice Bucket Challenge actually stands for—coming together to speak about mental health and creating an open environment in which people can comfortably share their experiences with one another. If you would like to make a donation and help support this cause, the link is pasted here: https://support.activeminds.org/fundraiser/6221101.