Squeeze the carotid artery so that the brain does not receive oxygen and then release it just before fainting. You can do something like that to yourself or to someone else and it would give you a high feeling for a short time. Among children it is called a ‘choking’ or ‘choking game’, but it is anything but a ‘game’. Because after just a few seconds you run the risk of brain damage and, worse, death.
“Deeply shocked and very affected,” the Anna van Rijn College in Nieuwegein reported this week that one of its students had died. A boy from 3rd pre-university education. About the cause, the school wrote in a letter to parents and guardians that it “turned out to be a so-called ‘choking game’ of which various videos are circulating on social media.” According to the school, the student’s parents thought it was important to make this known to “warn others and draw attention to the life-threatening risks of this or similar challenges.”
Several young people in the Netherlands have died in this way in recent years. In 2017 it happened to a 16-year-old boy from Arkel. Tim Reijnders. The parents found him at home with a knot around his neck, although according to them he was not suicidal. Slipped, became unconscious and died, according to the video that he had made himself with his mobile phone. Earlier that evening he had watched instructional videos on YouTube.
A year later, a 15-year-old boy died in The Hague as a result of a similar ‘choking challenge’. And in 2022, the Public Prosecution Service in Amsterdam warned of the dangers after a 15-year-old was arrested for putting four students in a chokehold, who then briefly lost consciousness. “We do not see strangling someone as a game, but as a crime.”
Going into a spasm
And who knows, says director Justine Pardoen of the Youth & Media Bureau, more young people may have died from such a choking game, but it is considered ‘misunderstood suicide’. It is all the more important, she says, that the parents of the student in Nieuwegein have drawn attention to the role of social media in such ‘challenges’. Because without a tragic reason, society finds it difficult to talk about these ‘games’. “School, teachers, parents: everyone quickly goes into a kind of cramp. Fearful of encouraging copying behavior.”
While, according to Pardoen, such challenges have become “a permanent part” of online youth culture. It started once – in 2005 – with ‘happy slapping’: just slapping someone on the street and filming it with your cell phone. Young people forwarded the videos and encouraged each other to imitate them, sometimes for a fee. And a large number of young people now also know what a ‘deodorant challenge’ is: spraying deodorant on the skin until a burn occurs. Or a ‘cinnamon challenge’: trying to get rid of a full spoonful of cinnamon in your mouth without drinking.
Of all times
And therefore a ‘choking game’. The ‘choking game’ has been around forever, Pardoen emphasizes, but young people are now coming into contact with content that does not suit their age earlier – some as early as the age of ten. Thanks to social media.
The death of Tim Reijnders in 2017 has changed something. The topic of conversation is less of a taboo since the TIM Foundation (Against Internet Abuses), founded by his parents, provides information about it. And Bureau Jeugd & Media, van Pardoen, also talks about it. And yet the online environment of young people remains a sensitive subject, she also notes. Because both parents and teachers often don’t know how to talk about it. And also because many adults – themselves addicted to their mobile phones – have such a negative image of their child’s online world that they don’t even want to talk about it. “Gosh, are you on that thing again? Parents often do not get much further. While, sit down next to it. Ask what your child likes to do online. What they feel about it. Because now we look away from it and remain surprised every time we hear about the risks.”