When she picked up her phone on October 8, Eranda Kumnova-Baci, a school inspector in Kosovo, thought she had to solve a common problem, not discover that dozens of teenage girls in her town were mutilating themselves to participate in a TikTok challenge.
“A mother called me to tell me that her daughter, a fifth grader, had self-harmed with her friends while participating in a TikTok challenge,” the inspector from Gjakova, 80,000 inhabitants, described to AFP in southwest of Kosovo.
She immediately asked all teachers, educational leaders and school psychologists to investigate. They recorded 22 cases of mutilation in a few weeks among teenage girls in the city. The first dates back to January.
“We first thought that they had injured themselves – deliberately – on their hands, with sharp objects. But after medical examinations, we realized that some girls had dozens of cuts all over their bodies,” explains M.me Kumnova-Kisses.
Gjakova, until then best known as the birthplace of several Albanian activists, was turned upside down.
“It was not only a shock for the educational community,” explains Mme Kumnova-Baci. “It was an earthquake for everyone.”
Mental health
TikTok, one of the most popular social networks in the world with 1.5 billion users, has based part of its success on “challenges”, campaigns inviting users to create videos by reproducing something: a joke, a song, a dance… or mutilations.
According to the mother of one of the victims, children as young as 9 years old took part in the challenge after coming across videos on TikTok.
“It’s like a game for girls aged 9 to 17, who reproduce what they see on TikTok,” explains this mother, who prefers to give only her initials, EZ
“It became my worst nightmare,” adds this woman, whose daughter took photos of each of her injuries.
Like the other parents, she refuses to give her name. As for the local authorities, they prohibited disclosing the identity of the victims, all of whom were minors.
Officially, TikTok bans videos promoting self-harm or suicide.
However, experts, researchers, doctors and parents have been warning for years about the effect of social networks on the mental health of their users – particularly young people. Dependence, harassment, lack of self-esteem… the risks are known.
In 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on the US government to take action to protect young social media users.
To forbid
“We are facing a national mental health crisis affecting young people, and social media is a major factor, one that we must address urgently,” Dr. Murthy wrote in an official opinion.
In Gjakova, according to people AFP spoke to, a large proportion of victims saw their self-harm as a way to overcome their sadness. Others wanted to test their resistance to pain.
“It’s incredibly hard for us to admit that our children intentionally harmed themselves,” admits Besfort Krasniqi, a 45-year-old business manager and father of three.
“It’s not just a problem, it’s more than that. It’s extremely disturbing,” adds Qendresa Hoti, a 32-year-old hairdresser. “My children are still young, and I am not directly concerned, but our fears are growing as our children do.”
To combat this trend, the educational community has launched new initiatives to alert students to the risks posed by social networks.
For Mirevete Aziri, psychologist, these acts of scarification are surely linked “to uncontrolled access to social networks, even when children are at school or with family”.
The Kosovar justice system has taken up the case and opened an investigation, the spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, Drin Domi, confirmed to AFP. The police were authorized to “take all measures” to shed light on this matter, according to him.
But for some, the only solution would be to ban the app altogether.
“The state should ban TikTok,” sweeps EZ “The application publishes everything. Even the most dangerous content!”
