My son died, 15, in a social media challenge gone horrifically wrong – TikTok 'jokes' have to stop, they're killing kids | The Sun

THERE was nothing unusual when 15-year-old Mason Bogard told his parents Joann and Steve that he was going upstairs for his evening shower. 

Moments later, after hearing a loud thud from the bathroom, Steve, 58, a fireman, went upstairs to investigate, and the Bogards’ lives were changed forever.

Mason, a typical teenage boy who loved the outdoors and woodwork, was lying motionless on the bathroom floor with a belt around his neck.

While Joann, 57, called an ambulance, Steve began CPR and managed to get his son’s heart beating once again.

“I remember thinking when we arrived at the hospital: ‘We got him here, he’s going to be OK now,’” Joann, a school administrator, recalls. “But it wasn’t to be.”

With brain damage caused by oxygen starvation and reliant on a ventilator to breathe for him, Mason underwent tests, until doctors broke the devastating news to his parents – there was no hope.

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“We had to let him go, his brain damage was unsurvivable,” says Joann, from Evansville, Indiana, USA.

“It was the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do.”

Leaving the hospital in May 2019 after their son’s death, the family were left with crippling grief and confusion.

The circumstances indicated Mason had taken his own life, but this made no sense to his mother. 

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“Mason was happy and healthy and had no history of depression,” she says.

But Joann believes that an online search she conducted in a desperate attempt to understand what had happened, revealed the shocking reason for her son’s death.

She discovered hundreds of videos posted on social media sites of teenagers taking on something called the Choking Challenge,

Choking Game or Blackout Challenge. Children and teens had filmed themselves strangling each other or choking themselves to the point of unconsciousness.

They were posting the footage online for comments and likes.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Kids were choking, passing out, waking up and laughing – and getting ‘likes’ for it,” she says.

“Mason used social media to watch tutorials for woodwork techniques, and I believe that must have been where he saw this content.”

In a video found on Mason’s phone the day after his funeral, footage showed him trying the choking challenge, but not succeeding in falling unconscious.

It was filmed the day before he died.

It’s Joann’s firm belief that a social media challenge killed her son. Sadly, Mason’s death is not unique.

His is just one of many cases around the world in which young people have died, including in the UK, potentially as a result of viral social media challenges.

Last month, 14-year-old Harris Wolobah, from Worcester, Massachusetts, died, allegedly after participating in a dangerous TikTok trend called the One Chip Challenge.

It involves eating what’s said to be the spiciest tortilla chip on the planet, and not eating or drinking anything else to ease the pain for as long as possible.

“I hope and I pray to God that no parents will go through what I’m going through,” Harris’ mother Lois said. “I don’t want to see anybody hurting the way I’m hurting. I miss my son so much.”

In August last year, Lauryn Keating, 31, from Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, discovered her 14-year-old son Leon Brown dead in his room at their home. 

She later learned that he, like Mason, had been trying the viral Blackout Challenge.

“One of Leon’s friends told me he’d been doing the challenge on FaceTime with them after seeing it on TikTok,” Lauren said in an interview shortly after her son’s death.

“He and his friends probably thought it was a laugh and a joke. One of the kids who he was on FaceTime with told me what he had done.

"She said they thought they would all wake up. But Leon didn’t come back around. It went horribly wrong.”

In response to Leon’s death, a TikTok spokesperson said: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Leon Brown’s family during this incredibly difficult time.

"The safety of our community is our priority and we take any claim about a dangerous challenge very seriously. Content of this nature is prohibited on our platform and would be removed if found.”

As recently as May this year, 16-year-old Christy Sibali Dominique Gloire Gassaille, from Orléans in France, died after she reportedly tried a dangerous trend on TikTok called the Scarf Game – or Jeu de Foulard – which involves people tying a length of cloth around their necks.

It can result in low levels of oxygen to the brain, which can cause seizures and injury, and can be fatal. 

By the end of this month, however, the Online Safety Bill should have passed into law in the UK – it was approved by the House of Lords several weeks ago – while the Kids Online Safety  Act (KOSA) is also going through the Senate in the US.

It’s hoped these will bring some level of protection to young people and their families against this trend for dangerous online challenges.

It will order social media companies to protect under-18s from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms. 

The Blackout Challenge was linked to the death of at least 15 children aged 12 or younger in the 18 months leading up to December 2022, and at least five children aged 13-14 also died in that time.**

In July 2022, US legal firm The Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) announced that it had filed two wrongful death lawsuits against TikTok on behalf of the families of eight-year-old Lalani Erika Walton of Temple, Texas, and nine-year-old Arriani Jaileen Arroyo of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, both of whom died of self-strangulation while participating in the Blackout Challenge, which they allegedly watched on the social media platform. The case is ongoing.

Not all social media challenges are fatal, but many still cause injuries to children. In August this year, several children were rushed to hospital in Southampton after another reported social media challenge, which encouraged them to overdose on paracetamol and see who could stay in hospital the longest. 

Police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Donna Jones, worked on the UK Online Safety Bill, and was told about the hospitalisations in Southampton when they happened.

She says: “These challenges are a very worrying trend, and I am concerned that children are not aware of the dangers. The Online Safety Bill can’t come soon enough.”

Mum-of-two Judith*, 40, from Suffolk experienced first-hand the risks posed by these challenges in February this year. 

Unbeknown to her, her 14-year-old twin sons had been filming themselves taking part in the Tap Out Challenge, which involves choking someone until they’re on the verge of passing out, at which point they ”tap out” to tell the other “player” to stop. They were planning to post the footage online – until one of the boys was hurt.

“I was working in my home office when one of my sons began shouting for me to come – and quickly. I ran to their room to find his twin lying on the floor, ashen-faced, with a large cut to the back of his head that was bleeding heavily,” recalls Judith.

“Through tears, they explained that one had been choking the other in a headlock, as part of this so-called game, until he was almost unconscious and had ‘tapped out’ to signal to stop. 

“When the twin who’d been choked stood up, he felt really woozy and fainted, hitting his head when he fell to the floor.

"Thankfully, he’d come round almost immediately, but he had a deep cut. I was absolutely horrified this had been going on right under my nose, and couldn’t believe how foolish they’d been.”

Judith took her son to A&E, where his wound was stitched up, but she agreed not to tell staff how he’d injured himself, simply saying he’d felt faint after skipping breakfast.

“They were both very embarrassed and upset, and pleaded with me not to tell anyone what they’d done,” she says.

“I made them swear they’d never try anything like it ever again. I believe they won’t, but I still feel very shaken about how much worse it could have potentially been.”

Since Mason’s death four years ago, Joann has become a vocal campaigner, raising awareness and working with legislators to bring in laws in the US to help protect children from harmful content online.

“Every week, I go online and see children choking themselves,” she says. “And that re-traumatises me. I cry, I pick myself up and I do it again because it is important.

“I imagine Mason watched these videos and probably had a false sense of safety,” says Joann.

“He probably saw someone who passed out, was OK, and he probably thought it was funny. The video got some likes and laughs. The kids get validation by posting them.”

This is a sentiment echoed by psychologist Dr Charlotte Armitage.

“We don’t develop the risk-averse part of our brains until we are around 25, which is why young people have high rates of accidents.

"Children push boundaries and seek risky behaviour,” she explains.

She believes the main reason children follow these challenges is their need to be liked.

“They need to be validated. This has always been true in the real world. When a video is liked online, it’s perceived as the same kind of validation people get from their friends when they do a dare,” she explains.

“The more outrageous the video you create, the more likes you get and the better that makes you feel.”

Donna says parents need to educate themselves about the type of content on platforms, talk to their children about the dangers and monitor what their children are watching closely. 

The Kids Online Safety Act in the US will require social media platforms to disable addictive product features and provide an opt-out of algorithmic content.

It also requires social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit assessing risks to minors, their compliance with this KOSA, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.

All these features, says Joann, would have saved Mason and countless other children. For Joann, the work continues.

“This content is rampant,” she says. “My main goal is to protect other families from having to go through this, because it is horrific. I work with a lot of other parents who have lost their children, and I think all of our kids are proud of us for the work we are doing.” 

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*Name has been changed  Photography: Pixeleyesphotography.co.uk, Rhian Hughes  Source: **Bloomberg Businessweek

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