The father of an Ohio 13-year-old who died after overdosing on Benadryl tablets in an apparent TikTok challenge is speaking out after burying his son.
Jacob Stevens of Greenfield, Ohio, decided to partake in the challenge with his friends earlier this month and landed in the hospital, where he ultimately was declared brain-dead before his parents took him off life support, according to his father, Justin Stevens.
“They sit back and make billions and billions of dollars,” Stevens said of TikTok, “and I can’t even wake up and say hello to my kid anymore, you know?”
Stevens told Fox News Digital on Monday that his son’s smartphone was like his “lifeline.”
“Any time that I ever tried to get into his phone, he would just set up the passcode or something… and he would hold to it that he was not letting me into his phone, so then I’d just take the phone,” Stevens explained. “I believe technology today is a downfall. What ever happened to playing with Matchbox cars in the mud pile on the side of the house all day and every day?”
Like many parents, he saw Jacob using TikTok and assumed the app displayed kid-friendly content, like “a funny person that’s singing a song.”
I’ve never seen that other side of TikTok. All I can say it: pay closer attention to what your kids are doing. he said.
Stevens, who said he was incarcerated for part of his son’s childhood, is devastated that he did not learn about dangerous challenges on TikTok before it was too late.
“I’ve said it over and over and over. As parents, we live in a fast-paced environment. Everybody is moving a hundred miles an hour. I would just say slow down. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. It breaks my heart every day to know that there’s still something out there that’s going to hurt some kid,” he said, adding that Benadryl is available to purchase over the counter.
Stevens had never heard of the Benadryl challenge until his son was hospitalized for six days with no brain activity.
The “challenge” to ingest 12 to 14 Benadryl pills apparently came from TikTok and was supposed to create hallucinations, but the outcome was deadly for Jacob and traumatizing for his friends, who apparently witnessed his death.
“He had no idea what he was doing.… He was just a kid. He made a bad decision,” Stevens said
Just like many 13-year-old boys, Jacob loved to spend time outside, riding his bike and playing sports, but he was also very “curious” and had recently started spending more and more time on his phone, watching videos on YouTube and TikTok, his grandmother, Dianna Stevens, previously told Fox News Digital.
A TikTok spokesperson said the company’s “deepest sympathies go out to the family.”
“At TikTok, we strictly prohibit and remove content that promotes dangerous behavior with the safety of our community as a priority. We have never seen this type of content trend on our platform and have blocked searches for years to help discourage copycat behavior,” the spokesperson said. “Our team of 40,000 safety professionals works to remove violations of our community guidelines, and we encourage our community to report any content or accounts they’re concerned about.”
TikTok’s community guidelines state that dangerous “challenges” are against the app’s rules.
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