Stop smashing eggs on your kids’ heads, experts beg parents

A new trend has emerged on social media: A child stands at a kitchen counter, waiting to watch their parent crack an egg into a bowl as they cook together. At the very last moment, the adult breaks it against the child’s forehead instead.

The children’s ages and reactions vary in the TikTok videos. While some older children can be seen laughing along with their parent, many feature younger children who appear stunned or visibly upset as their parent laughs at them. Experts are concerned that the trend could be harmful.

In terms of health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns handling raw eggs without care can put people at risk of salmonella — and children under 5 are at greater risk of falling seriously ill if infected. Pediatricians and other child development experts have spoken out about the risk of emotional harm to the children featured in many of these videos.

Cath Knibbs, a British child trauma psychotherapist who writes about how technology influences human behavior, said she found it “really, really difficult” to watch the clips.

“We’re talking about abuse disguised as having a bit of a laugh,” she said in a telephone interview. “For a child, the most important relationship they have is with their caregiver, whomever that should be. And that involves a trusting relationship — that this person will take care of me.”

She added: “It’s not just the cracking of the egg; it’s the parents’ responses of laughing. By children, that’s experienced as humiliation. It’s experienced as a lack of trust. And many children are going to be confused by that on a visceral level, never mind just about a cognitive level.”

The power dynamic is the key aspect in these videos, others said. “As social media often does, the challenge has taken on a life of its own and people are getting swept up in the virality,” Kristyn Sommer, who has a doctorate in developmental psychology, wrote on Instagram.

“Parents are participating in this but forget that there is an uneven power dynamic between themself and their child. Parents are forgetting to double check that this activity [isn’t] actually painful or to consider that randomly hitting their child could make them feel bad.”

The trend appears to be popular, with some videos of parents cracking eggs on their children’s heads receiving millions of views. The hashtag #eggcrackchallenge has more than 66 million views on TikTok, but that includes versions that do not involve children.

Anandita Pal and Samira Armin, two Houston-area pediatricians who run a social media account together to share information on parenting, said “parents should not be their child’s first bully.”

“Children need to first feel safe and protected starting at a young age. This feeling of security, whether that is physical or emotional, aids in their development and can impact their mental health in the future,” they said in an email. “Even a seemingly harmless joke can feel like a betrayal for a child who relies on their parents for that sense of security.”

The age of the child may play a role in how they experience the prank, with younger children often unable to understand what is happening.

Some experts said a one-off event is less likely to have lasting damage, but it’s hard to say from the videos whether this is the case.