The Blackout Challenge and Dangerous Viral Challenges

This is not a new internet phenomenon with a new name. Public health agencies have tracked it as the “choking game” since long before TikTok existed, and the CDC documented 82 deaths among American children aged 6 to 19 between 1995 and 2007 — the pre-smartphone era.^[1] What short-video platforms changed is reach and speed, not the behavior.

This page describes what to watch for and what to do. It does not describe how the challenge is performed, and you should not go looking for a video of it to understand it better. You do not need the mechanics to protect your child, and searching for it teaches the algorithm that your household is interested.

What the Challenge Is, and Why It Is Not New

The behavior is self-strangulation to the point of a brief loss of consciousness, followed by a rush as blood returns to the brain. Children have called it the choking game, the pass-out game, space monkey, and a dozen other names. The current one is the blackout challenge.

Two things about it are consistently misunderstood. First, the children doing it are usually not trying to hurt themselves. The CDC’s data show a median age of 13 and a population weighted heavily toward boys, and the framing is a dare or a game, not despair.^[1] That is exactly why it kills: nobody involved believes they are doing something lethal. Second, there is no safe version and no reliable margin. Oxygen deprivation injures the brain on a timeline the participant cannot feel, and a child who passes out alone has no one to stop it.

The Oregon Healthy Teens survey in 2008 asked 8th graders directly: 36.2 percent had heard of it and 5.7 percent said they had taken part. Participation was 1.7 percent among students reporting no mental health or substance use risk factors, and 15.8 percent among those reporting both.^[2] That is the shape of the risk: a behavior most kids know about, a minority try, and a vulnerable subgroup tries much more often.

Why Short-Video Platforms Spread It

The old route was a rumor in a locker room. The new route is a recommendation feed, which works differently: it delivers the idea to children who never went looking, with a face, a soundtrack, and an implicit crowd of people who already did it and were fine.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory notes that “in certain tragic cases, childhood deaths have been linked to suicide- and self-harm-related content and risk-taking challenges on social media platforms,” and that a systematic review found “discussing or showing this content can normalize such behaviors.”^[6] Normalization is the engine. A challenge does not have to be endorsed to spread; it only has to be seen often enough to look ordinary.

The AAP adds the developmental half: “Teens are naturally curious and often enjoy trying new things, especially when friends are involved,” the prefrontal cortex “is not fully developed until the mid-20s,” and “social media rewards outrageous behavior, and the more outrageous, the more attention it receives.”^[7] None of that makes a child reckless. It makes a child 13.

The Deaths That Have Been Documented

The CDC’s count is the most rigorous American figure: 82 probable choking-game deaths among youths aged 6 to 19 between 1995 and 2007, identified by searching news reports and two awareness websites.^[1]

For the platform era, the most cited reporting is a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation published November 30, 2022, which identified at least 15 children aged 12 or under who died attempting the blackout challenge over an 18-month period, along with several more aged 13 and 14.^[5] That is journalism, not a public health surveillance system, and it should be read as a floor rather than a total.

Why Nobody Knows the Real Number

There is no national registry for these deaths. The CDC built its count from news coverage and flagged the obvious problem: “The use of news media reports for mortality surveillance incurs the risk of low sensitivity and specificity.” It also warned that medical examiners should know these deaths “might be miscategorized as suicides.”^[1]

That last point deserves weight. A child found alone after a strangulation death, with no note and no history of despair, can be recorded as a suicide by default. Anyone quoting a precise national figure for blackout challenge deaths is quoting something nobody actually measures.

The Lawsuits Against TikTok

In May 2022, Tawainna Anderson sued TikTok and ByteDance in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (No. 2:22-cv-01849) after her 10-year-old daughter Nylah died. She alleged that TikTok’s “For You Page” algorithm recommended a blackout challenge video to her daughter, that TikTok knew about the challenge, and that its algorithm was defectively designed. The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunized TikTok.^[3]

What the Third Circuit Actually Held

On August 27, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. The reasoning: Section 230 immunizes a platform for information “provided by another,” and the court held that TikTok’s algorithmic curation of a personalized feed is the platform’s own speech, not someone else’s. As the opinion put it, “TikTok’s algorithm, which recommended the Blackout Challenge to Nylah on her FYP, was TikTok’s own ‘expressive activity,’ and thus its first-party speech.”^[3]

The holding is narrower than the headlines it generated. In a footnote, the court explained: “We reach this conclusion specifically because TikTok’s promotion of a Blackout Challenge video on Nylah’s FYP was not contingent upon any specific user input. Had Nylah viewed a Blackout Challenge video through TikTok’s search function, rather than through her FYP, then TikTok may” have had a different defense.^[3] Recommended is treated differently from searched-for. And reversing a dismissal means only that the case may be heard. It is not a finding that TikTok did anything wrong.

Where the Case Stands Now

On June 2, 2025, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the Anderson case transferred into MDL No. 3047 in the Northern District of California, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, over the plaintiff’s objection. The panel noted that the consolidated personal injury complaint in that MDL already alleges that platforms “promote dangerous challenges, including the Blackout Challenge,” and that injuries and deaths from such challenges are “a foreseeable consequence of Defendants’ addictive product designs.” It also referenced an earlier transferred case, Youngers v. TikTok, involving a 13-year-old’s death.^[4]

As of September 2026 the case is part of that MDL’s pretrial proceedings. We could not confirm a trial date or any ruling on the merits, so this page does not state one. Other families have filed their own suits over blackout challenge deaths; we are not reporting their current posture here, because we could not verify it. For the broader litigation, see our TikTok lawsuit guide and the tech harm lawsuit tracker.

What to Look For

The CDC tells parents, educators, and health care providers to watch for a specific set of signs: “mention of the choking game (or the game by its other names); bloodshot eyes; marks on the neck; frequent, severe headaches; disorientation after spending time alone; and ropes, scarves, and belts tied to bedroom furniture or doorknobs or found knotted on the floor.”^[1]

Alongside those, the pattern parents describe afterward is behavioral: a bedroom door that is suddenly locked, unexplained bruising at the neck or jawline, scarves or high collars out of season, or a child who seems foggy or unsteady after time alone. Bloodshot eyes and repeated headaches with no other explanation are the two most often written off.

Marks on a child’s neck warrant a same-day medical evaluation, whatever explanation you are given. There is no version of that finding that waits.

If You Find Evidence Your Child Has Tried It

Stay calm out loud, whatever you feel. Panic turns a conversation into an interrogation, and an interrogation ends the conversation.

• Check on your child physically first. Any episode of passing out needs a medical evaluation the same day, even days later.
• Say what you saw, not what you concluded. “I found a belt knotted on your floor and I’m worried” gets further than an accusation.
• Ask whether they tried it, how many times, and whether they were alone. Alone is the highest-risk version.
• Tell the pediatrician, and ask them to screen for depression, anxiety, and substance use — the Oregon data found participation far higher among children with those risks.^[2]
• Quietly reduce access to the obvious means in the bedroom, and stay nearby for a while.
• Do not punish your way through it. A child who expects to lose their phone will not tell you the next thing.
• Report the video in the app if it is still in their history, and check that the account has the platform’s teen protections turned on. Our guides to Snapchat and Discord cover two of the apps these dares travel through.

If you need a therapist for your child or for yourself afterward, our therapist directory and guide to getting help are places to start.

How to Talk About It Without Making It More Enticing

The risk in this conversation is real, and it is worth naming. Content that shows or discusses a dangerous behavior can normalize it.^[6] The AAP’s Center of Excellence noted that in one look at choking challenge content, roughly a quarter of posts were trying to prevent participation, and those videos drew more views than the rest — and more thumbs down.^[8] Warning kids is not automatically protective, and a dramatic warning can function as an advertisement.

What the AAP actually recommends is closer to a conversation than a lecture. Ask your kids “about the biggest challenges they’ve heard about among their friends or online.” Ask them “calmly and without judgment” what they think about it, which “helps build the skill of judging risk by talking about what could happen to someone who takes the challenge.” If a child seems interested, “use open-ended questions to encourage them to think through each step,” including the worst outcome and “whether it’s worth it.” And note the AAP’s practical trick: “Sometimes kids are more willing to talk about their peers than themselves.”^[7]

A few specifics follow from that. Do not describe how it is done, do not show a video to prove a point, and do not use a dead child’s name and photograph as a scare tactic. Keep the focus on consequences and on the fact that the body gives no warning. Make it a standing conversation about what shows up in their feed rather than one dramatic talk, and tell them plainly that if a friend tries this and something goes wrong, calling 911 will never get them in trouble at home.

For more on how these platforms shape what teenagers see, read how social media affects teens and the parents’ online safety center.