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'What Is The Choking Game?
Teenagers have always
been thrill seekers, willing to take dangerous risks. But, India TV reports
a growing number of teens nationwide are taking part in a disturbing and
potentially deadly trend, known as "The Choking Game."
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Kids around the world
are risking their lives and health seeking dangerous thrills by playing
The Choking Game. What is the choking game? Kids cut off oxygen
to their brain by choking themselves or using a rope to asphyxiate themselves
until they pass out. The Choking Game provides a feeling of dizziness
and floating sensation when the kids pass out during the choking game.
The feeling produced by the loss of oxygen can be addictive and many children
have died when they passed out and hit their head or were not able to restore
airflow and suffocate playing the choking game
The Choking Game is a
dangerous but very popular game among teenagers. Kids play choking
game by
Self-asphyxiation choking
each other or themselves, which they say "produces a kind of high".
Some teens explain choking game like this: "Press people up against
a wall, until they didn't have any oxygen, until they passed out".
It's found that teens play choking game for about four hours at a time,
repeatedly, over and over again to get high. Choking game gives a
floating kind of a sensation which they call it "high". Teens use
bags, belts, ties, or even their own bare hands to play choking game which
causes hypoxia, a shortage of oxygen. Choking game is also called
as "pass out game", "the fainting game", "the tingling game", or the "something
dreaming game". Some kids call it "funky chicken," "blackout," "flat
liner," "airplaning," "suffocation roulette," and "space monkey or cowboy". |
The choking game is not technically
a game but an activity whereby a state of unconsciousness is produced by
restricting the supply of oxygenated blood to the brain.
There have been many reports
of death from the game, but it is expected that this is underreported due
to being mistaken as suicides.
MUMBAI: Thirteen-year-old
Gaurang Dalvi, a Bombay Scottish High School student was found hanging
in his room from a nylon rope. His parents rushed him to the nearest hospital,
Hinduja at Mahim but because of the crowds at Shivaji Park for the Ambedkar
Mahaparinirvan Din, it took them 45 minutes to cover the short distance.
Gaurang was declared dead on admission. The post-mortem reports said he
had died of hanging.
There is no independent
verification regarding the internet-inspired stunt which Gaurang's parents
say caused his death, but the family says it received a phone call on its
landline the day he died. They heard a bunch of boys and girls giggling
in the background while a boy's voice asked, "Gaurang, are you dead as
yet?" The line was then disconnected.
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"It took some time for
it to sink in. We have never heard of such games before. If we had any
inkling of such a thing, we could have prevented it,"says Mangesh. Clearly,
the Dalvis do not agree with investigators who have attributed the incident
to academic stress. Describing it as an accident, they say they do not
want the police to investigate the identity of the other children involved
in the deadly game. They believe that all the children involved were ignorant
of the consequences and choose to blame the incident on media influence.
Although the Dalvis did not have an internet connection on their home computer,
and the only access to the Net at home was on Mangesh's laptop, which was
supervised, the Dalvis feel that he must have heard of the game through
friends and participated in order to win the approval of his peers. |
The "choking game", as it
is known in the West, is a cause for concern among parents in America.
An episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show that featured the horrifying trend
spoke of how children cut off the oxygen flow to the brain, which creates
a specific sensation and causes a person to pass out. "We just want other
parents to be aware that such a thing exists. Kids are exposed to way too
much through the internet. Parents need to know the games their children
are playing," says Gaurang's mother Mondira.
This game is popular among
the children of 9-16-year-old and who spend most of their times on internet
alone.
Child psychologist Roma
Kumar cautioned the parents through India TV not to leave their children
alone for long and to monitor what their wards are doing on the internet. |
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