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TikTok app on a smartphone: brain death after challenge
Photo: Dado Ruvic / REUTERS
In Sicily, a ten-year-old is believed to have died as a result of an Internet test of courage at TikTok.
According to media reports, the girl named Antonella had strangled herself unconscious with a belt at home in Palermo.
After a sister discovered the girl, the family rushed her to the hospital Wednesday evening.
There doctors determined the child's brain death, as confirmed by a spokeswoman for the Di Cristina hospital.
The judiciary and the protection of minors started investigations into the circumstances of death.
In media reports it was said that the girl wanted to take part in a "Blackout Challenge" or "Hanging Challenge" on the TikTok video app.
In such a dangerous action, participants choke themselves and film it with their smartphones.
The pictures show them in social networks.
The police are examining Antonella's cell phone, as the newspaper "La Repubblica" wrote.
Mayor calls for debate on cell phone use
The death of the child causes sadness and heated debates in Italy.
According to a TikTok spokesman, the ADN-Kronos news agency said: "We are ready for the relevant authorities to help with the investigation." The company is trying to stop calls for life-threatening behavior.
Palermo's mayor, Leoluca Orlando, wrote on Facebook that he and probably the whole city were in shock.
A debate about young people's relationships with smartphones and social networks is long overdue - "especially in times of the pandemic, which has pushed us more and more into digital communication."
Experts call for legal tightening of the way children use cell phones and social networks to be considered.
There have been "challenges" on the internet for years and in many countries.
Some of these challenges are not only supposedly funny, but also extremely dangerous.
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apr / dpa