A Swedish youth has suffered damage to their eyes after taking part in a trend on the social media platform Tik Tok that involved mixing chemicals to make a homemade explosive.
The youth, who was not identified by name or age, is a student of the Dalsjöskolan school in the city of Borås and is said to have damaged their eyesight after making a homemade explosive as part of a trend on Tik Tok.
“It’s serious, even though we don’t really know the consequences yet,” Dalsjöskolan principal Maria Persson said, remarking that to prevent more incidents, it was important parents be informed what children were consuming on social media, SVT reports.
According to the broadcaster, the incident is not the first in Sweden in which a child has been injured while trying to take part in the trend, which has children mix easily purchased chemicals in a bottle.
Two weeks ago, 13-year-old Samuel Tinglöf Bjelkmark from the municipality of Salem in Stockholm county, also tested the trend and the bottle blow up in his hand, causing injuries the required him to be taken to a local hospital.
The Swedish capital city of Stockholm saw a record number of explosions and bombings in 2020 despite the Chinese coronavirus pandemic theoretically encouraging people to stay at home, according to police statistics. https://t.co/h4eGXjqCoJ
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 21, 2021
“You’re risking too much. You risk your eye, you almost risk your face,” he told SVT and added, “You’re not ready when it blows. Some others who have done this have been worse off, I think I’m the one who’s been the lucky one of all.”
The issue is not the first controversial trend to appear on the social media platform, which has seen injuries from trends such as the “skull breaker challenge” which saw high school teens in Florida charged with misdemeanour battery as a result, or the “Benadryl challenge” which involved drinking the cough medicine to hallucinate and led to the death of a 15-year-old in Oklahoma.
TikTok, which is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, has previously been suspected of sharing user data with the Chinese government but in October, claimed that it did not share any user data at a U.S. Senate hearing.
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