When Eranda Kumnova-Baci, a school inspector in Kosovo, picked up the phone on October 8, she thought she was dealing with a common problem. Not that she found that dozens of teenage girls in her town were self-harming, supposedly to participate in a TikTok challenge.
"A mother called me to tell me that her daughter, a fifth-grade student, had self-harmed with her friends while participating in a TikTok challenge," the inspector from Gjakova, a town of 80,000 inhabitants in southwestern Kosovo, told AFP.
She immediately asked all teachers, educational leaders and school psychologists to investigate. They had recorded 22 cases of self-mutilation in a few weeks among teenage girls in the city. The first ones date back to January.
"We initially thought that they had injured their hands - deliberately - with sharp objects. But after medical examinations, we realised that some of the girls had dozens of cuts all over their bodies," explains Ms Kumnova-Baci.
Gjakova, until now best known as the birthplace of several Albanian activists, has been turned upside down.
"It was not only a shock for the educational community," says Kumnova-Baci. "It was an earthquake for everyone."
– Mental health –
TikTok, one of the world's most popular social networks with 1.5 billion users, has based part of its success on "challenges", campaigns inviting users to create videos reproducing something.
According to the mother of one of the victims, children as young as 9 took part in the challenge after coming across videos on TikTok.
"It's like a game for girls aged 9 to 17, who reproduce what they see on TikTok," explains this mother who prefers to give only her initials, EZ. "It's become my worst nightmare," adds this woman whose daughter took photos of each of her injuries.
Like the other parents, she refuses to give her name. As for the local authorities, they have forbidden the disclosure of the identities of the victims, all minors.
Officially, TikTok prohibits videos that advocate self-harm or suicide, and the platform is off-limits to children under 13.
“We do not allow the dissemination, promotion or sharing of plans for suicide or self-harm,” TikTok says on its website.
But for years, experts, researchers, doctors and parents have been warning about the effect of social networks on the mental health of their users – especially the youngest. Addiction, harassment, lack of self-esteem… the risks are known.
In 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on the US government to take steps to protect young social media users.
- To forbid -
"We are facing a national mental health crisis affecting young people, and social media is a major factor, one that we must address urgently," Dr Murthy wrote in an official advisory at the time.
In Gjakova, according to people AFP spoke to, many of the victims saw self-harm as a way to overcome their sadness. Others wanted to test their resistance to pain.
"It's incredibly hard for us to admit that our children deliberately harmed themselves," said Besfort Krasniqi, a 45-year-old business owner and father of three.
"It's not just a problem, it's more than that. It's extremely disturbing," adds Qendresa Hoti, a 32-year-old hairdresser. "My children are still small, and I'm not directly affected, but our fears grow with our children."
To combat this trend, the educational community has launched new initiatives to alert students to the risks posed by social networks.
For Mirevete Aziri, a psychologist, these acts of self-harm are probably linked to "uncontrolled access to social networks, even when the children are at school or with their families."
The Kosovar justice system has taken up the case and opened an investigation, the spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Drin Domi, confirmed to AFP. The police were authorized to "take all measures" to shed light on the case, he said.
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