Dangerous YouTube stunts taking kids’ lives

YouTube is a well-known platform for sharing everything ranging from music, comedy clips to medical procedures, but many teens and pre-teens imitate dangerous stunts in these videos and jeopardize their lives.

There is no dearth of videos in which teens and pre-teens can be seen choking and beating each other, or performing dangerous stunts. Most of these bloody acts are performed and posted to YouTube with an aim to attract more and more viewers, but unfortunately, many kids end up in emergency rooms or in some cases suffered the loss of their lives after imitating these dangerous videos.

Only last week, a fifteen-year-old boy died while imitating a choking game in a YouTube video. After seeing the video with his friends, the boy stood, passed out, fell forward, and crashed into an empty drinking glass. He got his collarbone fractured and a broken piece of the glass sliced through his interior jugular vein. He was rushed to a hospital, but his life could not be saved.

Dr. Thomas Abramo, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s pediatric emergency medicine chief, said two of his patients lost their lives while playing the choking game.

Speaking on the topic, Abramo added, “If you get one kid doing it, you tend to see more kids doing it. The spread of the event is definitely faster."

Other dangerous “games” on YouTube include salt & ice, the cinnamon challenge, jumping off a moving vehicle, hitting a person over the head with a folding chair, and extreme fighting.