Katherine Thomas, who chairs the department of neurology at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Brain cells begin dying within minutes of blood and oxygen deprivation, and if the carotid arteries in the neck are compressed by a rope or a belt, it can lead to irreversible brain damage after five minutes, says Dr. The game is based on the idea that, if stopped soon enough, it leaves no lasting damage, but that’s often not the case. While some may draw a connection between the Choking Game and autoerotic asphyxiation, a sexual act involving the deprivation of oxygen to stimulate arousal, experts believe that in the case of these children, it’s more about seeking a sense of euphoria. ![]() (Some experts say it’s been around as long as kids have been curious.) It’s been known by different names -“Pass-Out Challenge,” “Flatliner,” “Space Monkey” - but the goal has remained the same: get high through temporary asphyxiation. The Choking Game’s origins are murky, but anecdotal evidence suggests children have been playing versions of it since at least the 1930s. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says, “that we can’t make a difference.” ‘I Hope I Don’t Get Hurt’ She has been frustrated at how difficult it’s been to stop other children from dying in the same, preventable way. Sharron Grant started the nonprofit Games Adolescents Shouldn’t Play (GASP) when her 12-year-old son Jesse died in 2005 after he played the Choking Game with a rubber computer cord and accidentally suffocated. ![]() Companies like YouTube and Facebook have begun to take action against disturbing videos, which show the Choking Game being played with belts or ropes, but advocates argue the video giants aren’t responding quickly enough. Many schools are reluctant to raise awareness about the dangers of the Choking Game, fearing the lesson could backfire, teaching students how to play the game instead. Many coroners are not trained to identify it, so the deaths can often be misclassified as suicides, according to several coroners across the country. The federal government no longer studies Choking Game deaths, so there is no recent national data on the problem (the CDC declined to say why the deaths are not tracked). “I want to do it so bad, but I can’t just do it,” the boy says in the video, which was viewed more than 2,000 times from when it was posted in November 2015 until YouTube took it down two years later.Īs the number of victims has mounted, a group of grieving parents, mostly mothers, have mobilized to spread an urgent message to technology companies, the country’s policymakers and schools, but they often feel like no one is listening. In one video, titled “Choking game,” a young boy struggles to choke himself with his bare hands but ends up wheezing instead of passing out. “It’s gotten more extreme,” Rogg says.Ī quick YouTube search turns up more than 36 million results for “how to play pass out game” and more than half a million more for “how to play choking game,” which include everything from news reports to homemade tutorials. Without the safeguard of a fellow player, what was intended as a momentary high can easily turn fatal. Now, with millions of how-to videos on asphyxiation only a finger’s tap away, kids are more likely to play the so-called game alone, choking themselves in their bedroom with their own belts and shoelaces, advocates say. The Choking Game’s instructions were once spread through word of mouth and carried out in pairs or groups, with one child squeezing air out of another but stopping just short of the danger point. And advocates fear the problem may be worsening. That’s similar to the number of children and teens who died in accidental shootings - about 1,900 - in the same time period. More than 1,400 children and teens died from accidental hanging and strangulation from 2000 to 2015, according to the CDC. The federal government has not studied the issue since then, but there’s no sign the deaths have slowed. Most of them were boys between the ages of 11 and 16, according to a 2008 CDC report citing news stories and families’ own accounts. ![]() ![]() alone, 82 children between the ages of 6 and 19 died after playing the Choking Game between 19, the most recent year with data available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hundreds of families have endured that same nightmare.
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