We’ve all seen the Ice Bucket Challenge videos overloading our news feeds this month. The name sticks in your mind like one of those weekday afternoon carpet commercial jingles, somehow it just won’t go away.

The challenge itself is simple: raise awareness of ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) by dumping a bucket of ice water over your head or donate money to The ALS Association which funds research for the disease. The ALS Association estimates that 50 percent of the American public doesn’t know what the disease is.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, which can effect breathing, swallowing, and loss of the use of arms and legs. The disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects about 30,000 Americans.

First and foremost, pouring a bucket of ice water on yourself doesn’t sound like much a challenge. Jumping Double Dutch rope in steel toe boots while reciting the Gettysburg Address aloud is a challenge (and I’d like to see that). As we have seen day after day another celebrity ups the ante by using milk, toilet water, or whatever they can get their hands on to get the most views and retweets. Most of them end up donating money to The ALS Association anyway.

If it seems like a gimmick, it is. Getting soaked in ice water has about as much to do with the loss of voluntary muscle movement as yellow bracelets have to do with testicular cancer. Ice water and yellow bracelets are simply the vectors that deliver the message to us, however irrelevant they may seem to the cause they represent. These gimmicks appear harmless but they are more than a waste of time.

But does the gimmick actually work? It appears to have helped raise awareness more than we may realize. As of August 27 the ALS Association has received $94.3 million in donations since July 29. This includes 2.1 million new donors. This is staggering in comparison to the same period last year of just $2.7 million, a 3,000 percent increase in donations.

With the help of social media, late night talk show hosts, pro athletes, and political officials it’s easy to see how the challenge itself has greatly exceeded it’s goal of raising awareness. A year after it’s launch in 2004 Livestrong’s yellow bracelet campaign for cancer awareness raised $50 million. It took Livestrong a year to generate what the Ice Bucket Challenge did in less than one month.

Gimmick challenges and social media do wonders together to get the word out. Hashtags can generate worldwide support in a matter of hours with the right kind of timing and visibility. Other ailments and diseases that still fly under the radar of the American public need to take a page from the ALS playbook and find creative ways to raise awareness through social media. But the challenge itself is causing many people to be concerned over the wastefulness of the challenge.

People have complained that the challenge is a waste of water. This is exactly what the ice bucket challenge is: a waste of perfectly good water. The ALS Association has advised potential ice bucket challengers to be thoughtful about water usage and to consider making a donation instead, especially areas affected by drought. Apparently nobody got that memo.

Millions of people have not only failed to realize they are wasting water but encouraging it. Instagram has seen 3.7 million videos uploaded with ice bucket hashtags, Facebook has had more than 2 million ice bucket-related videos posted, and more than 25 million people have uploaded, commented on, or liked ice bucket-related posts.

Even if only 1 million buckets of ice water were dumped nonchalantly onto the pavement there is no denying that water was wasted deliberately. Encouraging this behavior shows callous disregard for natural resources and for those who have no access to them. There is an exponentially larger number of people affected by the lack of clean water than by ALS.

According to the World Health Organization there are more than 780 million people without access to clean water. That is more than 2.5 times the population of the United States. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours. This is the reality.

Promoting awareness and participating in social media crazes may be very worthwhile and rewarding but at what cost? Our self-centered behavior does not set a great example for the rest of the world or for our children. We can certainly find ways to be passionate about the things we care about and progress forward without taking two steps backwards.