Fight against "huffing," but do it honestly
Technophobia will not solve a problem that is several hundred years old. Our sin nature, not modern technology, is the true culprit.
Back in 1989, I knew of a couple teenagers who were fired from their jobs at a restaurant when they were found "huffing" behind the restaurant. They inhaled the condensed air from canned whipped cream. This is an incredibly dangerous practice, and people who engage in huffing (or dusting) can die on the first time from lack of oxygen to the brain. At least 50% as as many as 80% of people who die in fires die not from being burned, but due to asphyxiation from the smoke. Depriving the brain of oxygen is not something to be treated lightly.
The reason I mentioned the year is because the legacy media is blaming TikTok for a viral challenge that resulted in the tragic death of a 19-year-old girl. Here is someone who should have had decades ahead of her, and her parents were forced to bury her. But people have been huffing for generations - well before I was born. People were sniffing glue in the 1960s, and compressed air for dusting was used to get high in the 1970's, leading to many senseless deaths. Teens may think "huffing" or "dusting" is safer than things like methamphetamine because you are not taking chemicals, but it is in fact just as deadly.
We should avoid the temptation to overreact and regulate in response to this trend. Hard cases make bad law. Do we really want government to be tracking our purchases of whipped cream, cleaning products and a host of other things? Do we want government imposing more regulations on the Internet to stop something that would exist if no one ever used a computer, tablet or smartphone? Do we really think that this will not be abused to censor political speech, given that politicians hate the fact that the great unwashed masses have the ability and audacity to criticize them online?
We as a society have always wanted to blame the shiny new thing for all of our problems, but technophobia will not address the problem of huffing/dusting. People have been asphyxiating themselves for hundreds of years. The problem is not TikTok or any other social media platform. The problem is that we all have a sin nature. We need to address inhalant abuse and the dangers of asphyxiation from that angle, not from the paranoia of technophobia.