Abby Lipscomb

Staff Writer

Yet another dangerous challenge has emerged on TikTok and resulted in some fatal consequences. The “Blackout Challenge”, where you hold your breath until you pass out, has taken the life of a 10-year-old girl. 

The young child was alone in her bedroom at home when she participated in this viral dare. Other family members were also in the house at the time, but had no idea that the girl would be up to such dangerous activities. After they found her, they took her to the hospital, but she had already passed. 

The family is in a state of shock, grieving the loss of their child. The girl’s mother warns other parents to make sure they check their children’s devices as the internet is full of dangerous content and the children that see this don’t know any better. 

Things like this are becoming too common on the internet, but especially the social media site, TikTok. It has had way too many challenges similar to the “Blackout Challenge”, whose lesser outcomes from the lack of oxygen include cardiac arrest, organ damage, and brain damage. Last year, it was the “Milk Crate Challenge”, where people ran across loosely stacked milk crates, which resulted in severe injuries such as broken wrists, dislocated shoulders, ligament tears, and even damage to the spinal cord. 

Now TikTok isn’t the only place that’s had these sort of trends, risky and rather stupid activites such as eating tide pods, have always existed on the internet. Though, the alarming amount of these types of fads on the popular app are getting out of hand, especially since it’s advertised more towards children. 

Kids are so easily influenced by everything around them, and living during this digital era, they’ve begun to be influenced by the internet as well. The issue with that is that they don’t know any better. They’ll see a YouTuber or a TikToker do something they think is cool and want to mimic that, without knowing or understanding that what they saw could be potentially dangerous or even deadly. 

And unless parents are constantly checking their children’s devices, it’s hard for them to keep track of all the trends and know what to look out for to make sure their kids aren’t risking their lives to look cool on the internet. Most parents want to trust their children to do the right thing, but when something dangerous begins to be almost glamorized, it’s hard for kids to navigate what they should do. 

Though, not all blame can be put on parents’ shoulders, social media sites need to put in more effort to prevent these types of incidents from occurring. While it’s not completely their fault that children under the recommended age limit are gaining access to their platform, they still need to be held accountable. More sites need to start adding warnings to this type of dangerous content to help and tell kids to not try this at home because of the potential injury.