A viral social media challenge is raising major safety concerns.
Paramedics raced to a middle school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, late last month after 13-year-old Kathleen DeJesus became an unknowing participant in the "skull breaker challenge," which is all the rage on platforms like TikTok.
"I was thinking, like, I feel like I was going to die," DeJesus said. "I was paralyzed. I fell, I had a concussion, and I was numb, I couldn't feel my legs, my foot, my hands, nothing."
The challenge involves having three people line up in a row to jump — except the two people on the outside don't jump, instead trying to kick the legs out from under the middle person.
"It is really the virality of the platform, said public relations CEO and professor David Gerzof Richard.
Richard says this challenge and ones that have come before, such as the "outlet challenge," aren't the last we'll see of this.
"The reason this is happening is because there's not adult supervision to say, 'Hey, wait a second, stop,'" Richard said. "You wouldn't see this on Facebook or Instagram at this point."
DeJesus hopes these challenges start trending in a safer direction.
"I just feel like it needs to stop, because it's getting out of hand," she said.
The seventh-grader says she still has concussion symptoms and will be in Boston Friday to see yet another doctor.
A spokeswoman for TikTok told NBC News in a statement, "the trend in question is a violation of our guidelines, so we remove the content when it's reported."
