Poison center calls involving Benadryl's active ingredient among teenagers more than doubled in the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period last year, driven by a social media trend encouraging teens to take dangerous amounts of the over-the-counter drug to get high.
America's Poison Centers issued a health advisory, obtained first by ABC News, revealing that poison centers fielded 6,179 calls involving diphenhydramine among teens ages 13 to 19 between January and May of this year. That figure is more than double the count from the same window in 2025.
The advisory arrived days after Connecticut officials warned that three children in the state died from apparent diphenhydramine overdoses over the last two months. Officials said they could not confirm whether the deaths were connected to the social media challenge.
The numbers tell a grim, escalating story. In 2024, America's Poison Centers logged 10,068 calls involving diphenhydramine among teens. By 2025, that number climbed to 13,284, a nearly 32 percent jump in a single year. Now the 2026 pace has blown past even that trajectory.
And the nature of the calls is shifting. In 2020, 7.3 percent of teen diphenhydramine-only cases were linked to intentional abuse. By 2026, that share had nearly doubled to 13.2 percent.
America's Poison Centers was blunt about what is behind the surge.
"The increase in exposure appears to be driven by teens using diphenhydramine on purpose to get high rather than accidental medication errors."
Social media users have been documenting themselves taking excessive amounts of diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl and several over-the-counter sleep aids, in an attempt to push past the drug's drowsy effects and chase what they describe as a euphoric feeling. The so-called "Benadryl Challenge" has gone viral, prompting the FDA to issue its own warning.
The human cost is no longer hypothetical. Connecticut officials disclosed that three children died from apparent diphenhydramine overdoses in roughly the last two months. Whether those deaths trace directly to the social media trend remains unconfirmed. But the timing, and the drug involved, is hard to dismiss as coincidence.
Large amounts of diphenhydramine can affect both the brain and the heart. Symptoms of poisoning include extreme drowsiness, agitation, hallucinations, seizures, dangerous heart rhythm problems, and loss of consciousness. At high enough doses, the consequences can be fatal.
These are not exotic street drugs. This is an antihistamine that sits on open pharmacy shelves in every drugstore in America. Any teenager with a few dollars can buy a bottle without showing identification or answering a single question.
Kenvue, the company that manufactures Benadryl, issued a statement to ABC News on Wednesday. The company said "the health and safety of people who use our products is our top priority."
"The social media trend promoting misuse of diphenhydramine-containing products is extremely dangerous and should be stopped immediately. Our hearts go out to those impacted by the misuse of diphenhydramine-containing products."
Kenvue's statement called the trend dangerous and urged it to stop. Fair enough. But Kenvue does not control the platforms where the challenge spreads. The ABC News report did not identify which social media platforms are hosting the content, and no platform response was included.
That silence is telling. For years, Big Tech companies have insisted they can moderate content at scale, flagging misinformation, suppressing speech they deem harmful, and algorithmically shaping what hundreds of millions of young users see every day. Yet a viral drug challenge that has already been linked to a doubling of poison center calls and the deaths of children apparently continues to circulate.
Silicon Valley has shown it can move fast when the political will exists. Platforms have banned or throttled content on subjects ranging from election disputes to vaccine skepticism, often within hours. The question parents deserve answered is simple: Why does a trend that encourages children to overdose on an over-the-counter drug not trigger the same urgency?
The America's Poison Centers advisory had not yet been formally published as of ABC News's report. That means the full scope of the data, and any additional recommendations, may still be forthcoming. But the numbers already disclosed are stark enough to demand action now, not after the next round of quarterly content-moderation reports.
Diphenhydramine is cheap, legal, and everywhere. It does not require a prescription. It does not come with an age gate at the register in most states. For a generation of teenagers who learn behavior from short-form video, the barrier between curiosity and a life-threatening overdose is functionally zero.
Parents who assume their children would never participate in something so reckless should consider the trajectory: from roughly 10,000 calls in 2024 to more than 13,000 in 2025 to a pace that could far exceed that in 2026. Someone's kids are making those calls. The intentional-abuse share is climbing. And three families in Connecticut are now planning funerals.
America's Poison Centers directs anyone with poisoning-related questions or who needs emergency assistance to contact Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222 or PoisonHelp.org.
There are open questions the advisory does not yet answer. Which platforms are hosting the challenge content? What specific FDA warning was issued, and when? What ages were the three Connecticut children? Have any state or federal regulators moved to restrict over-the-counter access for minors? None of that information appeared in the initial reporting.
But the broad picture is clear. A social media ecosystem that claims to protect young users is instead serving as a delivery mechanism for a drug challenge that poisons children. A regulatory apparatus that can move at lightning speed on politically convenient targets has yet to produce a visible, coordinated response. And the call volume keeps climbing.
When the platforms can silence a sitting president overnight but cannot stop a trend that sends thousands of teenagers to poison control, the priorities are not hard to read.
