Informative but with possible consequences
With so much death happening all around us, it hurts me even more to see a story about children choking themselves to get a ‘high’ feeling. Janet Kornblum, in the USA Today article does a great job of reporting the story. Not only does she give a first hand account of the death of a child through this dangerous games she gives clear warning signs and what is being done to prevent this from happening.
I am curious to know how investigators can decide whether the death was due to the game or a suicide. It mentions it in the article but does not go into depth. Out of the 82 youths that have died, how do they know half weren’t suicide. In that case, although still dangerous, this choking game may not be as rampant as we think. I am not sure if she should have included the information about autoerotic asphyxiation and self-strangulation during masturbation. The reports did not have information pertaining to these two things, so it leaves me with more questions. This leaves more possibilities to why these kids are dying, they may be suicidal or horny teenagers!
One thing that really bothered me about the story was when the mother said her son did not like to drink or smoke. Of course, he was only 13. Which kids are drinking earlier and earlier, but I don’t think any of them particularly like it. It is more from peer pressure. Also, if she didn’t know he had been choking himself for pleasure, how did she know he didn’t drink or do drugs? Although hard for a grieving parent to answer, I think these answers would have been interesting to hear.
I also question whether more light that is shed on this subject will cause more children to want to do it. She said there were youtube videos of kids doing this. Maybe a good follow-up story would be interviewing these kids on youtube, or even why these videos are allowed online. Hopefully children are getting more ideas by seeing this article. Curiosity sometimes gets the best of us, so journalists need to be careful reporting stories like this.
Overall, this was a very informative article. Kornblum gives the slang terms, such as space monkey, which allows the out of the loop parents to know what their kids may be talking about. She also gives the warning signs and what people are doing about preventing these deaths.
