Grandad raises awareness after grandson died playing a Tiktok game
Laterius “TJ” Smith Jr. should have been celebrating the first decade of his life by splashing and squealing with his 10-year-old uncle, Chandler Coleman, and the neighborhood children on water slides that his grandfather, Marvin Coleman, recently set up in the Hyde Park neighborhood off Chelsea Avenue.
But this party was more commemoration than celebration.
Commemoration – because instead of taking pictures with TJ in the flesh, his party guests were posing next to cutouts of him in jeans and a plaid shirt, surrounded with images of Spider-man, of “Happy Birthday” in blue letters and cream-colored doves carrying hearts to heaven. That’s all the Tiktok Blackout Challenge left for everyone to remember TJ by, Coleman said. Cutouts and conversations. About the 9-year-old who was found hanging by a belt in his closet on June 10, and who Coleman said the police believed was a victim of the social
media challenge that urges players to choke themselves into unconsciousness. That's why Coleman transformed the space next to his used-car lot into a mini waterpark to memorialize his grandson if, for only a day, to get children out of the house and away from the dangers of social media that he and others believe led to his grandson's death.
“My son Chandler turned 10 on June 19th and that was the day of TJ'S funeral,” Coleman said. “So, it was a bittersweet day for me…
“Last year I took them to the waterpark together.”
Coleman said that on the day TJ died, his mother had called for him and when he didn't respond, she thought he was in the back of the house on his Playstation with his headset on. But when they went looking for him in his room and under his bed, they still didn't see him.
Until they turned around – and found him hanging in the closet.
“We pulled him down and gave him CPR, he threw up and we rushed him to the hospital,” Coleman said. “But he didn't make it.”
Coleman said the police looked through TJ'S phone, and found that he apparently had been playing the Tiktok Blackout Challenge. Such a challenge has existed on social media in some iteration or other over the years, but apparently was resurrected and repackaged on Tiktok. Tiktok is a social media network that focuses on sharing short videos – usually of people dancing or playing pranks. The blackout challenge videos challenged people to hang themselves to the point of unconsciousness, only to wake up later.
Children and adolescents, many of whom view games through the prism of play and not threat, have been taking on that challenge; children who are too young to think that anyone who creates a game would create one that could kill them. Like TJ, some don't survive it.
Earlier this year, a 12-year-old Colorado boy died playing the blackout challenge, as did a 10-year-old girl in Italy. Many psychologists believe adolescents and teenagers play risky social media games to garner the admiration of peers, and for the likes and follows that extreme behavior might generate.
Then there's this: Because of the pandemic and the isolation it spawns, many children and teenagers may be attracted to life-threatening social media games out of boredom.
But here in Memphis, Black children like TJ face an additional obstacle in resisting dangerous social media games.
Where many of them live, gunfire and bullets have made it risky for them to play outdoors. Playing indoors, however, may protect them from that violence, but not if they're playing a risky game on their computers or cell phones. Not if social media sites like Tiktok – which has since banned such challenges from its site – allow users to create games that could kill children just as dead as bullets.
“We're heartbroken about TJ, and we don't want to see this happen to another child,” said Natoria Carpenter, who stopped by the makeshift waterpark along with her mother, Memphis LIFT executive director Sarah Carpenter.
“Social media has ruined our kids. … Tiktok has too much for our young kids, too much stupid stuff on there for our kids.”
Yet Natoria Carpenter said that not having enough safe, stimulating places outdoors and away from the internet and social media in areas like Hyde Park also make it tough for parents to peel their children away from that craziness.
“We don't have anything for our kids to do here anymore,” Natoria Carpenter said. “The community centers are closed, and there's not much for them to do. … We shouldn't have to take our kids to Collierville or Germantown just to have nice stuff.”
Sarah Carpenter said she believes that while the schools could do more to educate parents on the dangers of social media, parents must also monitor their children's social media use. But in communities where parents believe being outside poses as much of a danger as being inside, that could be a challenge, she said.
"Our kids need safer places to be in their own communities," Sarah Carpenter said. "If we can get them out the house like yesterday, you didn't see any kids with phones in their hands, with tablets in their hands . ... They were just playing like kids are supposed to play . ... "We've really got to figure this out." ““Our kids can walk down the street and get killed . ... There's a lot more to this than Tiktok,” Natoria Carpenter said. “Our babies face so much . ... It's really sad just to see that baby (TJ) hadn't even lived half of his life.”
But Coleman, a former drug dealer who now deals cars and hope to Hyde Park, said he plans to do whatever he can create safe activities to lure children outside and away from social media.
"My ultimate goal is to turn this (the land next to the car lot) into a neighborhood park where the children can come and their parents can come," he said. "I want to turn it into a safe zone, where if you come around here shooting, you're going to get a life sentence."
In the meantime, though, Coleman plans to memorialize his grandson each year with waterslides and a party.
In hope that in remembering TJ on what would have been his birthday, the children who come won't risk playing a social media game that could cause them not to see their next one.
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com and you can follow her on Twitter: @tonyaajw