Doctors Criticize TikTok’s Latest Trend of Parents Cracking an Egg on a Young Child’s Head

Doctors are telling people to steer clear of a new viral TikTok trend where parents crack an egg on a young child's head, warning that it can have unintended medical effects.

The videos often contain #eggprank in the caption. The hashtag currently has over 685 million views.

In the videos, a parent usually stands next to a child in the kitchen. The parent takes a raw egg and cracks it on the child's head instead of in a pan or a bowl.

The children typically react with laughter, tears, anger, or shock. In one video, a child even attempted to throw an egg back at his mother.

Medical experts are now warning that the trend can have negative consequences.

Dr Meghan Martin, a pediatric emergency medical consultant at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Florida with 1.3 million followers on TikTok, shared her thoughts on the videos with Sky News.

 "I was not a big fan of this at all. This is not something that benefits kids in any way, and I honestly don't find it entertaining," Martin said.

She added that the parents are "literally smacking salmonella on their foreheads."

"It's harder to get a toddler to drink fluids when they've got a stomach bug or food poisoning, and so they're more likely to end up in the hospital for IV fluids," she said.

Amanda Mathers, a pediatric occupational therapist, tried the trend and said it was "hard to crack that egg on my head and my fully developed skull."

"And I almost felt a shock of, like, tears behind my eyes just trying to slam that egg into my head," Mathers said.

However, Rebecca Burger-Caplan, clinical director of child, adolescent, and family services at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said doing the prank once is unlikely to have long-term ramifications.