There’s a new viral challenge making its way through TikTok, and it’s led to devastating results.
According to CBS News, the skull-breaker challenge involves two people tricking a third person into standing in between them while they all jump. However, instead of the two people on the outside jumping, they kick the legs out from underneath the middle person when he/she jumps. That person ends up falling to the ground and becomes vulnerable to sustaining broken bones, head injuries, and more.
After two 13-year-olds in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, pranked their classmate into doing the challenge, the victim sustained a head injury and concussion that led to a seizure. The child’s parents, Marc and Stacy Shenker, told CBS they received a call that their son had been injured and arrived at the school 20 minutes later to find him “laying down non-responsive.”
The two seventh graders who arranged the prank have been arrested and charged with third-degree aggravated assault and third-degree endangering an injured victim, per the report. Following the announcement of the charges, acting Camden County Prosecutor Jill S. Mayer discussed the importance of parents talking to their teens about risky online trends.
“While the challenges may seem funny or get views on social media platforms, they can have serious and long lasting health consequences,” she said. “By having this talk with your kids, we hope to prevent future injuries and raise awareness about the real danger of some of these online trends.”
"We do not allow content that encourages or replicates dangerous challenges that might lead to injury," TikTok said in a statement about the challenge. "In fact, it's a violation of our community guidelines and we will continue to remove this type of content from our platform.”
The statement continued, “Nobody wants their friends or family to get hurt filming a video or trying a stunt. It's not funny—and since we remove that sort of content, it certainly won't make you TikTok famous.”
The platform also advised users to report skull-breaker challenge videos. TikTok told BBC News that a new warning has been placed underneath #skullbreakerchallenge “reminding users to not imitate or encourage public participation in dangerous stunts and/or risky behavior that could lead to serious injury or death.”
