A Utah teen is fighting for her life after a car surfing accident, raising the alarm on a growing social media trend.
15-year-old Ava Broadhead is in a medical induced coma due to an “extreme brain injury” after falling from the top of a moving car, according to Fox 13.
The teen, who was looking forward to attending homecoming, will now have to relearn how to walk, talk and even tie her shoes.
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“Ava was involved in a serious accident while attempting ‘car surfing,’ a dangerous trend that has unfortunately become popular among teenagers. She was thrown from the car, suffering severe brain trauma,” the GoFundMe page for Broadhead says. “What was meant to be a moment of fun has now left Ava in a hospital gown, with half her head shaved, fighting to recover.”
The incident is raising eyebrows across the nation as some are blaming social media for promoting dangerous trends to children.
“Unfortunately, with social media, there are ebbs and flows to these types of trends and right now this trend has been picking up,” Sgt. Aymee Race with the Unified Police Department told Fox 13. “I mean, it stems from the eighties, and movies, to 10 years ago. This was a significant trend and now here we are again with this trend picking up.”
Fox News Digital chatted with Times10 CEO and founder Ben Ricciardi, who says the dangerous internet trends are “alarming.”
“Here’s the thing with social media: things move very quickly,” he said. “New trends pop up daily, both dangerous ones and non-dangerous ones. One of the other ones was ‘I show speed’ by jumping over a speeding car, which most of these things are fake by the celebrities or influencers and then people go and try it, thinking they’re not fake, and there are sometimes catastrophic results.”
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Ricciardi explained that the youth follow ‘trends’ because they want the attention that social media has crafted.
“I think what’s happened is the youth wants to be the center of attention, which is what social media has created,” he explained. “What ‘trends’ are is being the first onto something and the faster a young person feels like they are the first onto something, maybe it will be their big break to get them famous or have their classmates see it and become more popular.”