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The Blackout Challenge: Why We Shouldn’t Just Follow Anything on TikTok

by Kevyn Gohu
July 8, 2022

TikTok may be effective for spreading information but the Blackout Challenge is one kind of information that shouldn’t go around.

TikTok’s trendiness among teens and kids is why all the more we need to monitor what goes on there. Recently, a new viral but deadly challenge known as the Blackout Challenge began to trend and caused the death of several little girls. Doing so prompted the Social Media Victims Law Center to file a case in the Los Angeles court against TikTok in the US.

What is the Blackout Challenge and who came up with it?

The Blackout Challenge involves people strangling and choking themselves—timing how long they can hold their wits before “blacking out”. They strangle themselves with all sorts of things: one case involved an 8-year-old girl in Texas strangling herself with a rope and a 9-year-old in Wisconsin with a dog leash. The challenge also caused deaths in Italy—a 10-year-old—and in countries like Australia.

Unfortunately, there’s no knowing who the sick mind was in coming up with the Blackout Challenge. However, ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok did not offer any words or statements regarding this.

Unfortunately, this is how many bloggers and streamers make money.

The Blackout Challenge is one of the few crazy things people start on the Internet to make money. People come up with all sorts of things—never mind if they’re dangerous—to get more followers. The algorithm works in that favor, regardless of its notoriety, if it’s fake news or not. So long as there’s enough clamor, not many think about the consequences. All the more parents need to help their kids stick to the commandments that every net i zen should follow.