TikTok skull-breaker challenge - sick or what???

[filka]

We have just received the following message from our school. We are not in the UK but this thing is spreading on TikTok so it is potentially everywhere. I am shaking like a leaf seeing this.

Quote:
It has been brought to our attention that there is a very dangerous and undesirable activity among young people around the world at the moment, called the ‘Skull Breaker Challenge.’

Essentially this involves three people, who begin to jump up and down and then two of them kick the legs away from the other causing her or him to fall onto either their back, neck or head. I am sure you can understand how extremely dangerous and reckless this is. To make matters worse, the children use their telephones to video this and then post it on social media.

I am imploring you to talk to your children about this and insist that they never carry out such an activity anywhere and we will be doing the same.
If any student(s) of our school are found to be doing this, there will be the most serious of consequences applied to their poor choice of conduct and behavior.

I have attached a link so that you may view for yourself. Warning – graphic content
Unquote

What a bizarre response you are getting OP. It's almost as if giving the heads up about something potentially dangerous is the wrong thing to do.

Mumsnet really can be the worst sometimes.

I have seen it online and also heard stories of it happening in both our high school and the upper primary years. It's real, it's dangerous.

THANK YOU for posting OP

lots of short clips of multiple people

Three. Hardly lots

TikTok as a whole is a scary place for pre teens and teens in my opinion, full of unfiltered videos promoting eating disorders, self harm strangulation during sex, and other things amongst the harmless cheesy dance routines. It sounds dramatic, but if this was about when I was younger I think I would be really affected by it. You don't even have to search for them either, all of those pop up on the 'just for you' page, and I didn't need to register to see them. Scary.

Tik Tok is ridiculous and scary. My 8 year olds are asking for it. Not a chance. It should be 18+ imo.

PineappleDanish do YOU understand how these things work? There are no ads on that video so no 'revenue' for the poster

But there's a view counter, right? That's how things "go viral" - because they get a lot of views. And people start sharing them.

Thankyou OP!

1. I corrected your 'revenue' comment. That video will not earn the poster any money.

2. the video title says "2 dead and many injured". If it is shared and 'goes viral' it's not encouraging the trend but raising awareness so can only be a good thing.

Burying your head in the sand and showing wilful ignorance about SM is much more dangerous IMO

YouTube revenue is more complex than just having a lot of views.

It's not wilful ignorance. My kids are switched on when it comes to risks, they know I have the right to look at their phones whenever I want although I rarely do, only one has TikTok anyway.

Next week it will be another craze. And another, and another. It's far better to educate your child in general terms about doing daft/dangerous things online than fly into panic about some new craze every 5 minutes. Pre-teens shouldnt have tiktok anyway - the age limit is 13.

I really am beginning to think that smart phones for children should be treated as a safeguarding issue or even have an age restriction. It’s completely unnecessary and exposes children to all kinds of risks that they’re not old enough to deal with.

pineapple you're posting here as if you know how YouTube and 'going viral' works when you clearly don't.

I've never suggested anyone should 'panic'. Forewarned is forearmed as they say. Awareness is key and shrugging and saying 'oh well next week there'll be another craze' is just avoidant of the power tiktok and the pursuit of likes has over kids.

No one needs to get into a flap about this, but it should at least be on every parents radar.

The stupidity of kids.

Shaking like a leaf? Really? That’s rather extreme.

you're posting here as if you know how YouTube and 'going viral' works when you clearly don't.

@PineappleDanish clearly does, and is making sense.

Momo was a prefect example, the only reason so many kids got so worried about it was because of schools and parents giving out dire warnings about it, spawning copycat videos and kids telling all their friends that they HAD seen it so it MUST be real.

There are not A&E departments being overrun by kids with broken backs, this is not a major craze sweeping the world, it is a few stupid kids doing stupid things, getting more views than they would have done because these warnings always bring you to a link on You Tube. Why would you say that is? Because it isn’t so people understand, a simple explanation would do that. That’s why these things go viral.

No exactly on topic but the problem is that schools can't win over warnings like these.

If we alert parents - via an email or newsletter online, we are told we are being "hysterical". If we don't do anything, we are "ignoring the obvious issues and failing in our duty to help the pupils".

Let's ignore the fact that (as I work in primary) these pupils shouldn't have social media based on their date of birth. Whatever we do will be wrong to someone.

This is exactly the kind of thing ds3 (13) could end up involved in. He would think the two other boys were being kind and including him in their games. There are some very mean boys in his year at school. Thanks OP I will warn him.

Minty as I said, this is nothing like Momo. I work in programming and social media for a living, so without being patronising, the Youtube and TikTok algorithms and how things go viral on each platform are completely different.

The same video can be uploaded on YouTube and TikTok. On Youtube it will get 3 views. On TikTok it will go viral in a day. It's just a totally different set up.

As I said, this isn't Momo, and there's nothing wrong with giving parents a heads up that this trend is doing the rounds. In fairness to TikTok, they are removing the videos pretty damn quick when they're posted so it's unlikely to be a case of 'A&E departments being overrun by kids with broken backs'. It's not hysteria, it's awareness.

Some PPs seem to have this warped view that if they become aware of a trend then somehow they are contributing to the viral nature of said trend You can be aware of something without feeding it, and ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

This is a fake trend like Tide Pods & Momo which is goes viral through hysteria outside the platform. I am on Tiktok all the time as my job involves social media & working with influencers. Have not seen this "challenge" show up one or seen a single clip of someone referencing this. Genuine trends spread like wildfire within days and you can instantly pick up on that by scrolling through the For You page (main page, like the Facebook feed).

I don't doubt that some kids in Brazil tried doing something to go viral and it ended in tragedy, however calling it the latest "challenge" that all kids are doing on Tiktok is a huge exaggeration. And as the previous user rightly pointed out, if the only source is a YouTube video then the motivation is 100% trying to earn money through views. Tiktok is very quick to censor dangerous content so it's impossible that any clip like this would even go viral. In the case of genuine stunt clips by professionals, there is always a disclaimer shown warning viewers not to recreate it themselves.

Ironically loads of teenagers are now aware of this "challenge" due to their parents telling them after reading MN. slow clap

I just spoke to my daughter about it and she showed me a clip straightaway involving 3 girls in a local school in Surrey. She said there have been a few people posting these clips on instagram.
Thanks for the information as I would not have been aware of this stupid stunt.

Ironically loads of teenagers are now aware of this "challenge" due to their parents telling them after reading MN
Being aware of something won't make them automatically do it, besides what you hear I think most teenager would be against breaking a neck.
Those who are the type can now be avoided. When they ask a single kid to jump between them they'll know why and avoid. Personally I'd break their neck if anyone done it to my DC.

And to clarify how things go viral on Tiktok, @Sparklfairy is correct in that the algorithm is very different to Youtube. Any clip posted on any account has the potential to go viral, by most definitions is getting over 1million views. On Youtube it's virtually impossible for videos from small channels to get 1M+ views in isolation.

Tiktok has a Discover page where they post officially approved challenges. These are very family-friendly like doing a dance challenge, a favourite life hack, a random fact or showing which TV shows you've watched. The best chance of going viral is using a hashtag from this Discover page because Tiktok will place you within a feed that thousands of people are browsing. The huge majority of teenagers on Tiktok will only work on these challenges because they know they have much better chances of going viral here.

Of course, if someone decided to an unapproved and potentially fatal challenge then it's an isolated tragedy but not a "trend".

@FineWordsForAPorcupine Do you have TikTok? because I can assure you it IS trending on there.

If you look on YouTube you can find videos of this and it looks bad as those in the middle end up falling back and banging their head. One was on tile flooring. I don’t understand why they would do that but I do wonder if those in the middle know what they are letting themselves in for.

foxy86

The point of the "joke" is that the person in the middle has no idea what is going to happen.

IMO the OP is correct is wanting to get this out there because I know many children at the school where I work were this would just be another way of bullying them.

And frankly, I would support my school in a fixed term exclusion for anyone that did this.