Oregon teenager Olivia Ross is on a mission to spread positivity online after she says she was a victim ofTikTok’s “Skullbreaker Challenge.”
“I don’t think TikTok is the demon,” Olivia, a 17-year-old high school junior, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, “but the way we used it needed to be changed.”
“I was constantly on the app and making content,” says Olivia, who regularly made videos for her high school’s spirit page.
So she said yes.
Standing in the middle of the group for the clip, Olivia was supposed to jump as high as she could — and she says she thought everyone else was going to jump as well. But while she was in midair, her legs were kicked from behind, causing her to fall backward and land headfirst on the classroom floor.
“I didn’t know that that was going to happen,” she says.
Olivia Ross.Courtesy
Olivia also says she didn’t know the video was actually an attempt to recreate a viral trend known as the “Skullbreaker Challenge.”
“The video was taken at the back of the class towards the end of the period,” the officer adds. “The idea was to have all kids jump, but one student (Olivia) would have her legs kicked out from under her and fall. All agreed to this and one of the freshmen was positioned behind Olivia to catch her. Olivia’s legs were kicked out from under her, and she hit her head on the floor.”
“Olivia claimed that she was not aware that her legs would be kicked and that she’d fall to the floor,” she officer continues. “The others stated that everyone had talked about it and that Olivia knew what was coming.”
Regarding disciplinary action, “the district followed board policy,” says the officer, who declined to be more specific because of privacy issues.
A Type 1diabetic, Ross' blood sugar skyrocketed and wouldn’t come down in the aftermath of her injury.
“She blacked out when she hit the floor,” says her mom, Lindsay Zobrist, 44.
Suffering from a headache and dizziness — “I was just feeling really sick,” Olivia remembers — she called her parents from the school nurse’s office. They picked her up early from school and took her to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a concussion.
“The doctor had seen other kids who had the same thing happen,” says Olivia.
Olivia Ross was injured in a TikTok challenge (far left) and then made and released an anti-bullying video with parents Lindsay and Zach.
The situation was made worse when Olivia returned to school. Even as she was recovering, video of the stunt — and her injury — circulated, and some students claimed Ross was aware of what was going to happen, something she denies.
“They said I was trying to be TikTok famous,” she says.
For more on dangerous TikTok challenges — including expert advice for parents — pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
Before her nightmare, Ross was a member of thehomecomingcourt and had a lot of friends, but she felt alone afterwards.
“I went from being somebody who loved to go to school to somebody scared to go to school every day,” she says. “I was scared that something like this would happen to me again.”
But Olivia was determined to turn her experience into something positive for others online. In early March 2020, she started an organization calledTeaching Kindness Matters.
“I wanted to do something about it and make sure that this didn’t happen to any other kids,” says Olivia, who has five younger siblings.
She tells PEOPLE she has worked with TikTok to try to take down videos like the “Skullbreaker Challenge.”
“It makes me feel really happy knowing that I’m helping other students not have this happen to them,” she says. “TikTok is a really powerful tool andcan use be used for so much positivity. There are so many positive trends that you can participate in. I think the good outweighs the bad and I just want to keep it that way.”
TikTok declined to comment to PEOPLE for this week’s story about alarming challenges online, and the number of users injured performing challenges is unknown, but in an updated safety policy released in February, the company says, in part, “We do not permit users to share content depicting, promoting, normalizing or glorifying dangerous acts that may lead to serious injury or death.”
source: people.com
