TOLEDO, Ohio — You may have heard of it: it's a social media challenge called the "tripping jump challenge" or the "skull-breaker challenge."
"This is really knocking someone's legs out from under them and having them slam into the ground. It's not funny and they really can have serious injuries," trauma and injury prevention outreach coordinator at Mercy Health, Nicole Knepper said.
The videos are now pushing local first responders to warn people about the challenge before it happens in our area.
"We don't want to see anybody hurt and when I witnessed what we actually posted and what's actually going on, we had to put something out there," Sylvania Township fire chief Mike Ramm said.
Here's how the challenge works: three people stand next to each other, the person in the middle jumps and while they are in the air, the two on the outside sweep their legs from under them and then post the video online.
"When you do fall, your head is heavy. So, your head is going to hit first and if you're hitting your head directly on a hard floor, you're going to sustain some sort of brain injury," Knepper said.
First responders and health officials want parents to be aware, and make sure your children know that this is going around.
With viral challenges, people join in because they want to have fun. This challenge is far from fun, especially for the person unknowingly getting tripped.
"So, you don't want to do that to someone. You don't want to intentionally harm someone. You might think it's funny to see them fall but it's really, really not and they could have devastating injuries because of it," Knepper said.
Knepper said that sometimes, there's a hesitation to bring attention to these videos.
Ramm said that this needs to be a warning to help keep this from happening locally.
"This one here, I don't see any good outcome. I mean, we're taking the complete control of somebody being able to stand up out of their hands. There's nothing but bad can come from it," he said.