Mom Takes On YouTube For Deadly Blackout Social Media Challenge: NPR

Annie McGrath and her son Griffin when he was young.

Annie McGrath

hide caption

toggle caption

Annie McGrath

Annie McGrath and her son Griffin when he was young.

Annie McGrath

Annie McGrath never had to worry too much about her 13-year-old son, Griffin. He had good grades and lots of friends.

Griffin played baseball and drums and even won a national science competition. Because he was so interested in science and experiments, he spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos. This is where he and his friends saw what is called the blackout challenge.

“We had heard about challenges,” said McGrath, who lives in Madison, Wis. “But I didn’t know there were some that were deadly.”

Social media challenges involve people recording themselves doing something dramatic, funny, or risky. The videos often go viral. However, some of these challenges can be dangerous. Like the blackout challenge, which involves holding your breath until you pass out.

That’s what happened to Griffin one night in February 2018. He took on the blackout challenge from his bedroom, while FaceTiming with friends. Only he never woke up.

“I didn’t know anything was wrong until it was too late,” McGrath said, in an exclusive interview with NPR ahead of a speech she is planning for Friday.

Griffin is one of approximately 1,385 children known to have died from the blackout challenge, according to a nonprofit called Erik’s Cause, which was founded by Judy Rogg, whose son also died from the complications. of a choking game.

“It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” McGrath said. “The only ones we know are the people who go to the news or find themselves.”

YouTube spokeswoman Brittany Stagnaro told NPR that it is company policy to remove videos that involve suffocation or choking issues. But, McGrath said she sees such videos and reports them daily. Often they are not disassembled. She said some videos stayed on the site for years.

Put pressure on those who have a financial interest: the shareholders

McGrath, along with an advocacy group called Parents Together, is now lobbying people who have a financial stake in YouTube to have the company have more transparency around its protocols for such videos.

On Friday, she addresses her parent company Alphabet at an annual meeting of shareholders. She urges shareholders to vote for resolution 15. This resolution proposes a third-party review of Alphabet’s audit committee, which is responsible for assessing risks to the company, including how YouTube handles videos in harmful content.

Griffin McGrath

Annie McGrath

hide caption

toggle caption

Annie McGrath

Griffin McGrath

Annie McGrath

In his pre-recorded speech shared with NPR, McGrath said Alphabet’s “inaction” on these videos “should give investors pause” and demonstrates the company is not appropriately avoiding legal risk, regulatory risk and human risk.

Glass Lewis, one of the leading proxy advisors in this area, also supports the resolution. He shared his report with NPR ahead of the vote, which said an independent assessment of Alphabet’s audit committee could benefit shareholders.

The giant tech company, however, recommends investors vote against resolution 15. In its statement to the contrary, it said its audit committee has “the experience, skills and protocols required” to manage risk and that the resolution would not be an “efficient use of company resources or result in better management or performance.”

McGrath’s speech at the reunion is one of the first times a victim’s family member has told their personal story at a shareholder event, said Zak Rogoff, who studies corporate resolutions. shareholders as director of research for the non-profit organization Ranking Digital Rights.

“What’s interesting about this is that the shareholders have brought in someone who is personally affected by the problems the company is causing,” Rogoff said.

He said these resolutions rarely pass because the shareholder voting structure typically gives more weight to the votes of the people running the companies. “But if they get high enough support, companies will sometimes start to move cautiously,” he added.

Parents try several pressure tactics to keep kids safe

Talking to shareholders is just one of the many tactics parents are now adopting to keep kids safe online. McGrath and dozens of other parents who say their children also died of other things they saw on social media, such as suicide from bullying, eating disorders and drug use, have formed a group.

Annie McGrath (second from right) joined other mothers on Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about child safety online in October 2022.

Eric Kayne/ParentsTogether

hide caption

toggle caption

Eric Kayne/ParentsTogether

Annie McGrath (second from right) joined other mothers on Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about child safety online in October 2022.

Eric Kayne/ParentsTogether

Parents are approaching the issue from all sides to pressure both lawmakers and tech companies. They are in a class action lawsuit against YouTube and TikTok and they lobbied Congress.

The pressure works.

Last week, the United States Surgeon General issued a first-of-its-kind directive stating that social media can pose a “profound risk” to the well-being of children and adolescents. And over the past six months, numerous bills have been introduced at the federal and state levels aimed at keeping children safe online.

“It’s a low-hanging fruit for bipartisan support,” said Zeve Sanderson, executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics. He said there is something visceral about hearing the stories of children who have been hurt and people can relate to them. “There’s been a lot of appetite for social media-driven policies.”

For McGrath, she just wants to make sure no more child can find a blackout challenge video.

“They’re still kids and they’re going to think, oh, well, they see it a lot on YouTube and it’s not scary, it’s normalized,” McGrath said. “It breaks my heart over and over and over again. These are preventable deaths.”