B1 – Intermediate
TikTok is a popular video-sharing social network especially among young people. At the beginning, users normally shared their dance moves videos. In recent years, there have been a variety of contents that users can share; including challenges that have proven to be not just dangerous but also fatal.
Listen to this audio and read the transcript to know more about a young boy who lost his life for taking on a TikTok challenge.
https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/a-boy-dies-after-tiktok-challenge-level-1/
Vocabulary Questions:
- What does ‘blackout‘ mean here, “He is in a TikTok challenge called the “blackout challenge”. Use it in your own sentence.
- What does ‘to be against something‘ mean, “Archie’s family is against the change.”? Use this expression in your own sentence.
- What does it mean ‘to switch off the machines‘ mean here, “Last Sunday, doctors switch off the machines.” Use this expression in your own sentence.
Discussion Questions:
- Do you have a TikTok account? How is it different from other social media platforms?
- What is the “blackout challenge” in Tiktok? What are your thoughts on it?
- Have you heard of other dangerous TikTok challenges? What are some of them?
- Should TikTok be held legally accountable for incidents like this?
- How do you think TikTok could improve its safety measures?
2 replies on “Boy Dies After TikTok Challenge”
1. Do you have a TikTok account? No. How is it different from other social media platforms? The differences between TikTok and other social media is that TikTok is a social media focused mainly on short videos in which people usually appears doing little dances. However, other social media, like Facebook or Instagram, are more focused on posting photographs with a little description about them.
2. What is the “blackout challenge” in Tiktok? What are your thoughts on it? The “blackout challenge” consists in keep your breathing off the more time as you can, being able to fall unconscious. I think that the “blackout challenge” it’s a very dangerous practice that couldn’t be considered as a joke. Young people aren’t conscious about the risks they are taking on when they do this type of practices, and it’s difficult for families detecting those behaviors. So I’m convinced that must be some subject at school to be aware of the dangers of social media to our young people.
3. Have you heard of other dangerous TikTok challenges? What are some of them? Yes. I heard about a TikTok challenge called “Skull breaker”. In this challenge three people have to jump at the same time holding their hands. The two people that are on the side have to hit the leg of the person that is on the middle of both, doing that this person fall down. There were some deaths due to this challenge because the person that is on the middle used to fall down hitting his head or his back.
4. Should TikTok be held legally accountable for incidents like this? I think that TikTok should be obliged to develop mechanisms to detect dangerous situations in his platform’s videos and alerting users when they are going to see the video. Nevertheless, I don’t think that TikTok should be legally accountable for this type of incidents because it is really difficult to be aware of the dangers of all the videos.
5. How do you think TikTok could improve its safety measures? I think that should develop mechanism to detect dangerous situations on the videos and to give people the opportunity of report videos that are considered dangerous.
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