A DONEGAL grandmother has made an impassioned plea for young people not to take part in dangerous challenges on TikTok after her granddaughter’s hand was left very badly burned.
The 13-year-old girl was taken to hospital on Sunday after sustaining serious burns to her hand in a challenge which asks participants to spray sanitiser onto their hand before taking a lighter to it.
The flame is supposed to extinguish when the person then moves their hand. However, in the case of the teenager, this did not work. Instead, the teenager had to stand on her hand to put the flame out.
Speaking to the Donegal News this week, the young girl’s grandmother said both her granddaughter and family have been left very shaken by the ordeal.
“Her hand is very badly burned. We don’t know what type of sanitiser she used or how much of it she used. She had been doing the challenge earlier in the day on her fingertips with her cousins, but she did it again on Sunday night on her own in her bedroom.
“She was taken to hospital on Sunday night and she is back up there today (Tuesday). She had to stand on her hand to put the flame out.
“Her hand will take a while to heal. The blisters have been left open for now, there is no bandage on her hand.
The grandmother said her granddaughter’s hand is very sore and due to the amount of blisters she is presently unable to bend it.
“She got an awful fright and I think she has been left very embarrassed too.”
Appealing to parents to be vigilant, the woman said: “For me, the biggest thing is to get awareness out there among parents about these challenges because young people are doing them. I was not aware of this particular challenge but since, a lot of people have private messaged me about it. My granddaughter is just very lucky that there was someone at home when she did this. She was able to go downstairs to her mum who took her straight to hospital.”
The grandmother said her granddaughter is not using TikTok at the minute in the wake of the incident.
“Hopefully not too much damage will have been done. She was very lucky that after it happened she came downstairs to her mum. If she had been on her own, it would have been a longer amount of time before she got to the hospital.”
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