For several days now, many parents have been worried about a phenomenon called the “Skull Breaker Challenge”. These are several videos in which young people, but also adults, can be seen falling badly during a jump.
Very important and at the very beginning about the term “Skull Breaker Challenge”:
YES, there are videos like this.
YES, imitating something like that is extremely stupid and you can get very seriously injured.In order to prevent misunderstandings in reporting, we therefore refer to our article “Please don’t copy it: You can seriously injure yourself with the “Skull Breaker Challenge”!” ( HERE ).
This article is not about rating the viral videos, pushing warnings or downplaying them, but rather about a viral posting that claims that there have now been two deaths due to the so-called Skull Breaker Challenge.
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This is a posting that is distributed on both Facebook and WhatsApp. Attached to this posting are one or more videos showing young people, but also adults, carrying out this senseless action. These are the typical viral videos that can be found everywhere as example videos of this campaign.
Very important !!!
Please share to parents, teachers and schools!!!
Please share with your children and any parents you know...this is now trending in schools, 2 school children have already died.

Trend and dead?
In principle, it is not wrong to talk to children about dangerous nonsense. However, we ask for calm discussions, because panicked explanations are not appropriate.
Just like panicked postings are not helpful. At this point we are faced with the claim that two school children have already allegedly died due to a Skull Breaker Challenge. This is where things get difficult because the postings or messages on WhatsApp do not provide any sources.
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Let's start looking
First of all: Through a normal search engine search or research in press releases, we did not find any current deaths in relation to a Skull Breaker Challenge.
However, there is a case from Mossoró (Brazil) that may sound similar to the Skull Breaker Challenge in several aspects of its description: 16-year-old Emanuela Medeiros died after falling and hitting her head. Several websites attribute the teenager's death to the challenge ( compare ), but two things have to be noted here :
On the one hand, the death occurred several months ago (November 2019) and on the other hand, it is not clear whether the teenager was intentionally and unexpectedly placed in the supine position. You read in the Brazilian media ( here ):
According to the victim's cousin, the student was playing a game with two other people who held her and tried to turn her like a somersault. During the shoot, she fell and hit her head on the floor.
(De acordo com a prima da vitima, a estudante participava de uma brincadeira com outras duas pessoas que a seguraram e tentaram girá-la, como uma espécie de cambalhota. Durante o giro, ela caiu e bateu a cabeça no chão.)
This actually sounds very similar, but here we are at a point in time three months BEFORE any videos of Skull Breaker Challenge jumps appeared on TikTok. Furthermore, there was no further reporting on the topic over the entire period. Either it is a very early form and unknown at the time, or this death is now being brought into this topic in retrospect.
Skull Breaker Challenge: Broken arm and abrasions
In addition to the report from Brazil, there are also reports of hospitalizations. For example, WSFA12 News writes about a boy from Ozark, Alabama, who was taken to the hospital on February 14, 2020 with a broken arm after the Skull Breaker Challenge jump ( see here ). However, he did not die.
In another case, you see photos of a boy with abrasions on his face. These photos come from a Facebook post in which a Tucson mother reported her son's injuries. She writes:
I really considered posting this, but I think people need to be aware of this vicious, cruel viral prank.
On Wednesday my son was asked to do a jumping competition with his two "friends", when he jumped up the two boys kicked him as hard as they could so that his legs flew out in front of him. He landed hard, flat on his back and head, as he tried to stand up he lost consciousness, he fell forward and landed on his face. The school superintendent ran to his side as the two boys giggled and laughed as his stiff, unconscious body lay on the asphalt.
He has a head injury, stitches in his face, severe cuts in his mouth and two front teeth that I need to keep an eye on.
Apparently it's a Tik Tok viral prank that's being filmed and is gaining traction on social media.**Note: I thought I'd clarify, no, he didn't know this was going to happen. He has known the boys in question for some time, so his trust in them was assured. The premise of the prank is to make an unsuspecting person jump so that the pranksters can kick/trip the person to see how hard they fall.
Preliminary result
During initial research, we were unable to find two deaths of school children related to a Skull Breaker Challenge. Only a deceased student from November 2019 is brought into this context by various media, but one should not lose sight of the fact that neither the viral videos were an issue at that time nor did the current media reports at the time warn of a challenge.
At this point, it is still not entirely clear to us where the posting got the deaths (or the second death, if you like) from. At the time of publishing this article, we were unable to find a correspondingly comprehensible case. However, we are happy to receive tips.
Basically, we are like the Dortmund Clinic: It's best not to do such nonsense! Neither as a participating jumper nor as people standing next to them.
Update: There are no known cases of a victim of the #skullbreakerchallenge #Dortmund . But it doesn't have to come to that first.
— Klinikum Dortmund (@klinikumdo) February 18, 2020
And, dear parents, teachers, friends: Talk to your children calmly . At the same time, please be careful about hysterical messages and postings that do not contain any sources. In this case, hearsay is not a good guide.
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

