It’s a cold night in Melbourne and former teacher Katie Govic is warning a roomful of primary school parents that what they’re about to see will be confronting. Mothers and fathers are gathered on seats in the library, amid picture books and paper chains folded by small hands. Earlier today, Katie gave different versions of this talk to kids aged five to 11. She asked them if they had their own devices. The vast majority owned an iPad, a smartphone or a PC. She asked if they knew someone who had been bullied or if they had been bullied themselves. Most had. Now their parents are here to learn how to keep their children safe.
There’s a video cued up on a screen at the front of the room, and Katie presses play. Three teenage boys stand in a row. The one in the middle jumps and the two others each sweep a leg under him, throwing the jumper off balance so that instead of landing on his feet, he slips and slams into the ground. Gasps go up in the room. “Jesus,” one parent mutters. The video contains a few different versions of the same “prank”.
“In the last one, the guy gets knocked out completely,” Katie says. “In 2020, when this was doing the rounds, my colleague’s daughter’s friends did this to her. She was in Grade Two. So where did they see it?”
This viral TikTok trend, which became known as the skull-breaker challenge, was linked to reports of concussions,
