Reports about a spate of boating deaths in the United States related to a TikTok challenge are untrue, an Alabama public safety agency said on Monday (Jul 10).
A TikTok spokesperson has also said that the supposed challenge has not trended on the platform.
The reports centred on claims made by Jim Dennis, a first responder with the Childersburg Rescue Squad in Alabama.
In a story aired on Jul 3, he said that four people had died in the state in the past six months after jumping from moving boats as part of a TikTok challenge.
“Last six months we have had four drownings that were easily avoidable,” he told the ABC 33/40 TV station in the city of Birmingham.
“They were doing a TikTok challenge.”
The story was picked up by media outlets around the world including People magazine, the Daily Mail, the Hindustan Times, as well as the Straits Times and Mothership in Singapore.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), which oversees the state’s public safety agencies, dispelled the viral claims in a tweet on Monday.
It said that its Marine Patrol Division had “no records of boating or marine-related deaths that could be directly linked to TikTok or a trend on TikTok”.
It noted that one person was fatally injured after jumping from a moving boat in 2020 and a similar case happened in 2021, but that neither death was linked to TikTok.
In a follow-up email to the Associated Press, the agency provided details about six water-related deaths that marine patrol investigated so far this year. None of the incident reports mentioned TikTok or any such challenge.
Dennis has also walked back his claims, telling Alabama news site AL.com on Monday that his remarks were taken out of context.
He did, however, maintain that his organisation had responded to reports of people who jumped off boats this year.
“It got blown way out of proportion,” said Dennis, who did not respond to requests for additional comment this week.
ABC 33/40 also declined to comment, but in a story on Monday about the state’s response, the station included its full interview with Dennis.
TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe, meanwhile, said that no boat-jumping challenge has ever trended on the platform.
Elizabeth Losh, an American studies professor at William & Mary, a university in Williamsburg, Virginia, who has studied TikTok trends, confirmed that some posts featuring people jumping off boats are visible on the site – including one from 2019 with the hashtag #boatjumpchallenge – but they did not appear to have been particularly viral or widespread.
She also noted that TikTok had placed warning labels over some of the posts.
The social network’s community guidelines prohibit users from showing or promoting “dangerous activities and challenges”. These include “dares, games, tricks, inappropriate use of dangerous tools, eating substances that are harmful to one’s health, or similar activities that may lead to significant physical harm”.
Source: CNA
