TikTok’s Fatal ‘Blackout Challenge’ Hasn’t Gone Away, Causing Another Casualty
Image via XanderSt / Shutterstock.com
In a recent press statement, the Bethany Police Department (BPD) in Oklahoma confirmed that the death of a child this week could be linked to a deadly TikTok challenge.
Although TikTok isn’t where the notorious ‘Blackout Challenge’ first originated, it’s already been linked to two other deaths this year – a 10-year-old in Italy, and a nine-year-old in Tennessee.
In the latest incident, police and emergency services had responded to reports of an unresponsive child at an apartment complex just before midnight. Officers noticed ligature marks on the child’s neck, and despite being quickly transported to the Oklahoma Children’s Hospital, he succumbed to his injuries the next day.
While it’s unclear if the child had a TikTok account or was actively viewing videos on the platform, a spokesperson for the BDP said that investigators were currently looking into such leads.
According to Insider, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that children have died from similar challenges from as early as 1995. The ‘Blackout Challenge’, like its many predecessors, involves encouraging people to choke themselves until they pass out or reach some sort of “high.”
Though the TikTok challenge has not been identified as the sole cause of the latest tragedy, social media platforms like it have allowed such trends to become more accessible to children and teens.
A spokesperson from TikTok did tell Insider that it blocks “related hashtags and searches to discourage people from participating in or sharing potentially dangerous content.”
As of now, you won’t be able to find any videos upon searching for the challenge on the app, and there has been no evidence the challenge had been recently trending either.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that children and teens haven’t found other ways of working around such bans to still perpetuate internet trends.
[via Insider, cover image via XanderSt / Shutterstock.com]
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