Trending Silhouette Challenge on Social Media as Product of Uninvolved Parenting

Written by Oladimeji Daniels

It is safe to say that the biggest challenge on social media at the moment is the silhouette challenge. It started on Tik Tok and has spread to other social media platforms.

The silhouette challenge is usually someone dancing in a doorway and at a certain point in Canadian singer Paul Anka’s 1959 song “Put Your Head on My Shoulder”, the lights go off and the person posing in front of the doorway turns into a silhouette, often times a naked silhouette, where outlines of their body contours are clearly seen.

There are those who use Doja Cat’s song “Freak” in which she samples Paul Anka’s 1959 song.

This challenge is happening all over the world on social media and has found its way to Nigeria. Many celebrities have joined in on the challenge and married couples in some instances have also partaken in it. It is safe to say it is like a wildfire in a harmattan, as ordinary Nigerians, especially ladies, are falling over themselves to push their own silhouette challenge out on the social media.

There is a certain Snapchat filter known as “vin rouge” that is used to create the lighting effects.

From our findings, it appears many Nigerian parents have no inkling about this viral challenge that their daughters have taken a serious liking to. It is certain that many parents would find it unbelievable and shocking, to say the least, if shown the silhouette challenge of their daughters on social media.

While many may blame this on the unsavviness of many parents when it comes to social media, the truth is that parents cannot be totally excused from however their children turn out. Many parents are just too uninvolved in the lives of their children. For them, it is as though parenting should be on autopilot. They live in the same house as their kids, but they can at best be described as strangers to each other. Such parents are either too busy making money or facing their own problems to care about their children. Some also hide under being busy with the “work of God”.

Children in homes like this may have everything in the world, except parental love and involvement. They are left to bungle through life on their own.

An article by Kendra Cherry on Uninvolved Parenting states that children whose parents are mostly uninvolved in their lives tend to misbehave more. In her book “Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life”, Peg Streep says daughters of such mothers learn that love is earned and that “you are not loved because of who you are, but for what you do”.

So, all through their lives, they seek love and approval in the weirdest ways possible. One of such ways is the lack of any feeling of inhibition at all in showing their nudity on social media. They jump on all immoral ventures, especially those that would bring them the attention that they lack from their parents.

Proper parental monitoring would ensure that parents monitor the use of social media by their children and would know how to check their excesses.

Parents must know that money can never take the place of parental love and supervision. They must know that they alone would suffer the shame if the kids they spend all their money on turn out as morally bankrupt individuals.