A 10-year-old girl died after reportedly trying the 'blackout challenge' she learned from social media, mother says

• A 10-year-old girl died after reportedly taking part in the purported "blackout challenge."
• Tawainna Anderson said her daughter Nylah held her breath until she passed out.

A family is warning against the "blackout challenge" after a 10-year-old girl suffocated on December 12.

Tawainna Anderson said her daughter Nylah held her breath until she passed out as part of the challenge she saw on social media, ABC 7 reported.

While some outlets have reported that the "blackout challenge" was a TikTok trend, Insider was unable to find any evidence suggesting that Nylah found out about the purported challenge from a TikTok video. Searching for the term "blackout challenge" on TikTok still yields no results, and instead links to a page on learning "how to recognize harmful challenges and hoaxes."

As Insider has previously reported, asphyxiation challenges have circulated on the internet for years. The intention behind children holding their breath is to achieve a "high" from passing out for a few seconds.

Games involving choking date back to as early as 1995, according to a 2008 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"She was a butterfly," Anderson reportedly told the outlet. "She was everything. She was a happy child."

Elizabeth Wood, a licensed clinical social worker who worked at a hospital local to Anderson, told the outlet that Nylah was in her bedroom and her family was at home when she died.

"But no one was in the bedroom with her when this happened, so there was no one there to save her," Wood reportedly said.

Another 10-year-old girl died while also taking part in the challenge in Italy in January. And in July, police attributed the death of a child in Bethany, Oklahoma, to the same trend.

TikTok told Insider in a statement at the time that the platform blocks "related hashtags and searches to discourage people from participating in or sharing potentially dangerous content," and they couldn't find "evidence" that the trend existed on the app.

Insider again reported in November that there was little evidence to connect asphyxiation challenges directly with TikTok, and such dangerous or destructive fads were likely to circulate online without gaining popularity on specific platforms.

"You never know what you might find on their phones," Anderson said, according to ABC 7. "You wouldn't think 10-year-olds would try this. They're trying because they're kids and they don't know better."

Insider has reached out to the platform for up-to-date information on claims related to the blackout challenge.