TikTok has new trends going viral every day, but not all of them are good. One such challenge is the so-called ‘blackout challenge’, which has led to the death of a 10-year-old girl in Pennsylvania.
TikTok Blackout Challenge - what is it?
The TikTok ‘blackout challenge’ involves filming yourself holding your breath until you pass out. Need we say anymore about how dangerous that is?
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This isn’t a new trend - most of us will remember being challenged to hold our breath everytime we drove through a tunnel on a school trip. But the problem with this challenge being on a platform like TikTok is it can spread fast, meaning more children are being exposed to it and could potentially be seriously hurt or even die.
The blackout challenge has been linked to several deaths throughout 2021. On 12th December, a family in Pennsylvania, US, was left distraught after their 10-year-old daughter, Nyla Anderson, died after taking part in the challenge alone in her bedroom.
Nyla’s mother, Tawainna, is now urging parents to check their children’s phones and monitor what they’re watching online. Despite rushing Nyla to hospital when they found her unconscious, it was already too late. The family doesn’t want anybody else to go through what they have.
TikTok issued a statement earlier this year in response to the deadly challenge and said: “TikTok has taken industry-first steps to protect teens and promote age-appropriate experiences, including strong default privacy settings for minors.” The platform has also blocked any content with hashtags related to the challenge.
This isn’t the first or last challenge to get out of hand on social media. Just last week, police in the US were run ragged with copycat threat videos being made in response to the Oxford School shooting spree on TikTok. Children as young as 11 have been arrested in relation to the videos and while most threats have been found to be nothing more than a hoax, each one has had to be investigated.
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Earlier in the year, there was the 'dry-scooping challenge', which led to one woman having a heart attack.
There was also the TikTok 'devious licks' challenge, which encouraged children to steal from their school. TikTok took the same action as they did with the Blackout Challenge and blocked any content tagged with words associated with the trend.
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash/Árpád CzappTopics: TikTok