B2 – Upper Intermediate
Sonia Hopkin, the mother of Tiegan Jarman, the 13-year-old girl who died after doing a trend she saw on TikTok, pleas for measures to be taken to make young children more aware not only about the dangers of household chemicals, but also of the internet.
Read the article about a mother’s plea after losing her daughter over a social media trend.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz94j0zd9j3o
Vocabulary Questions:
- Define “chroming”. “Mrs Hopkin also called on TikTok to do more to stop actions, such as chroming, from becoming trends.” Use the term in a sentence.
- What does “solvent abuse” mean? “The mother of a girl who died while copying a “horrible” social media trend is calling for children to be taught about the dangers of solvent abuse.” Use the term in a sentence.
- What does “to raise awareness” mean? “Mrs Hopkin now wants to raise awareness of the “dangers of this horrible trend”.” Use the idiom in a sentence.
Discussion Questions:
- What are your thoughts about what happened to Sonia Hopkin’s daughter?
- What is your opinion about introducing mandatory lessons about solvent abuse at schools?
- Share your thoughts on this, “One video would be bad, but the fact it has become a trend is unbelievable. It shouldn’t be available on the internet.“
- What can you say about Tik-tok’s statement, “Content promoting dangerous challenges is not allowed on TikTok, and we proactively removed 99.8% of videos that violated our policies on this issue before they were reported to us.”
- How are children taught about the dangers of social media and the internet at schools in your country?
- Have you ever heard of similar incident where a person got into trouble because of some trend they saw on social media?