Chroming, choking and skull-breaking – social media challenges can come with deadly consequences

“Chroming”, also known as “huffing” or “bagging”, has become a notorious – and potentially fatal – trend. Chroming is a form of recreational drug use that involves inhaling cheap and accessible but highly dangerous substances and solvents, such as deodorant aerosols, paints and permanent markers. Sniffing the chemicals gives an immediate euphoric high – but it comes at enormous risk.

In March 2024, Tommie-Lee Gracie Billington, an 11-year-old boy, died in the UK after inhaling toxic chemicals in aerosols. His grandmother, Tina Burns, blamed the chroming craze on TikTok for his death.

In August, 12-year-old Cesar Watson-King survived a cardiac arrest during a chroming challenge for social media. In Australia, 13-year-old Esra Hayes died last year after inhaling chemicals from an aerosol deodorant can while at a friend’s sleepover.

As well as inducing a fast high, chroming can cause sudden death. Inhaling chemicals can lead to cardiac sensitisation, when the heart becomes more sensitive to adrenaline and other catecholamine compounds – hormones that help your body deal with stress. This can lead to life-threatening changes to the heart’s rhythm, causing it to beat irregularly (ventricular tachycardia) or abnormally fast (fibrillation). Resuscitation is rarely successful in these cases.

But that’s not all. Chroming can also lead to unintentional toxicity and asphyxiation, where the molecules of the chemical being inhaled displace oxygen from the lungs, or prevent oxygen crossing into them. This can also prove fatal.

Inhaling dangerous substances is a terrible idea. Even if users survive the short-term risks, there are longer-term dangers from the lipophilic (fat-loving) properties of hydrocarbons in the inhalants, which can cross the blood-brain barrier.

As use continues, hydrocarbons can accumulate in the body and cause damage to the brain (neurotoxicity), which can lead to degeneration of brain cells and nerves.

Skull-breaking

Chroming isn’t the only potentially deadly social media craze. The aptly named “skull-breaker challenge” – when two people kick the legs from under a third person to make them fall over – has caused serious injuries in the US and UK.

Our skull has a unique construction, with flat bony plates protecting the brain. At the front there is a “crumple zone” of many smaller bones or parts of bones that absorb facial impacts to protect the brain. Trauma to the face is not usually fatal, unless the airway is compromised or important blood vessels are damaged.

But if someone falls and hits the back of their head, then there is only a relatively thin, flat bone protecting the brain. The impact of a fall isn’t usually immediately fatal – but the risks can come later. Delicate vessels inside the skull can rip and tear, causing internal bleeding. Over a few hours, as the size of the bleed increases, it can begin to compress the brain. If not diagnosed and treated, the brain bleed can cause the person to slip into a coma, suffer paralysis and potentially die.

Blackout

The blackout challenge is a potentially fatal social media craze where people try to choke themselves until they pass out.

This trend has claimed the lives of at least two children. In 2019, 15-year-old Mason Bogard died after attempting the blackout challenge. In 2021, nine-year-old Arriani Arroyo also died after participating in the challenge on TikTok.

Choking limits blood supply to the brain and deprives the brain of oxygen, which causes people to blackout. But not everyone is able to re-open this blood supply after passing out.

People have different anatomical variations in their blood supply and, when passing out, there is no guarantee that the blood and oxygen supplies will be reinstated. This challenge can cause irreversible brain damage in minutes.

Unfortunately, despite the casualties, these trends keep cropping up on social media. It’s a good idea to educate children and teens about the harms of attempting them, so they don’t find out the risks for themselves.

Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.