Over 2 million people were tagged in Ice Bucket Challenge videos on Facebook last year. The Ice Bucket Challenge involved people dumping a bucket of icy cold water on their heads to promote the awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. 
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a rapidly progressive neurological disease that causes the death of nerve cells located in the brain and spinal cord. Unfortunately, there is no cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and as high as 30,000 people in the U.S. are living with the disease.
In most cases, the cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is not known and a small percentage of people diagnosed by the disease inherited it from their parents. Unfortunately, patients that are diagnosed with the disease typically pass away within two to five years.
Ice Bucket Challenge Promoted On Social Media
People that were asked to participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge were given 24 hours to dump a bucket of icy water on their heads and were encouraged to donate to the ALS Association. When the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral on Facebook and YouTube, the ALS Association said that the donations would be used primarily towards amyotrophic lateral sclerosis research.
In September 2014, Facebook said that over 17 million videos related to the Ice Bucket Challenge were uploaded to the social network. The videos were viewed over 10 billion times by more than 440 million people. The origin of the Ice Bucket Challenge on Facebook appeared to be connected to former Boston College baseball player Pete Frates. Frates was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2012.
Some of the high-profile individuals that participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge includes Dwayne Johnson, Justin Bieber, Eva Longoria, Jack Black, Justin Timberlake, Oprah Winfrey, Luke Bryan, Chris Pratt, LeBron James, Tyler Perry, Selena Gomez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kobe Bryant, Ashton Kutcher, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, Robert Downey Jr., Ben Affleck, Sarah Palin, Martha Stewart and former President George W. Bush. The viral campaign helped raise a lot of funding for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and encouraged more people to donate to charity.

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