The ‘blackout challenge’ has recently been doing the rounds on video-sharing application TikTok. The challenge involves restricting the oxygen to the brain, and fainting. It is also known as the ‘scarfing’ or ‘the choking game’.

Most recently, the challenge came into the limelight after the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl in Italy. The girl, who was discovered on Wednesday by her sister in their bathroom with her phone in hand, died in the hospital due to a cardiac arrest. She appeared to have taken part in the new TikTok challenge. 

According to AFP, Italian prosecutors have begun an investigation into the death, following which the girl’s phone has been seized. 

TikTok said on Friday that it had not found any content on its platform that could have led the girl to participate in any such challenge. Owned by Cinese company ByteDance, the application did however admit that it was helping the authorities in the probe over possible “incitement to suicide”.

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“The safety of the TikTok community is our absolute priority, for this motive we do not allow any content that encourages, promotes or glorifies behaviour that could be dangerous,” a TikTok spokesman said, as per AFP reports.

Medical experts have consistently warned about the danger such challenges pose to young people, especially since signing up on these applications is very easy. Italy’s data protection agency also filed a lawsuit against TikTok in December, alleging a “lack of attention to the protection of minors”.

According to AFP, the girl’s parents told La Repubblica newspaper that another daughter explained that her sister “was playing the blackout game”.

“We didn’t know anything,” the girl’s father told the paper.

“We didn’t know she was participating in this game. We knew that (our daughter) went on TikTok for dances, to look at videos. How could I imagine this atrocity?” he said.

TikTok has gained widespread success since its launch in 2018 due to its parodies, and short dance or comedy video performances set against popular music. 

The death of the girl garnered strong reactions in Italy and demands for better regulation of such applications.

“Social networks can’t become a jungle where anything is allowed,” said Licia Ronzulli, president of Italy’s parliamentary commission on child protection, as per AFP reports.