Texas teen hospitalised after a viral TikTok trend goes horribly wrong.
TikTok's massive popularity comes with a dark side.
The platform has spawned countless viral trends, from challenges that increase cancer risks to routines that target impressionable young users.
Now, a Texas family is living through every parent's worst nightmare after a TikTok experiment left a 12-year-old boy with severe burns.
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Caden Ballard and his older brother decided to recreate a viral TikTok video they'd seen showing someone rubbing alcohol into a bottle and setting it on fire, making flames shoot up the bottle.
“My brother and I did that, and it was cool,” Caden told KXAN.
After the fire appeared to have gone out, his brother told him to dispose of the bottle.
“My brother grabbed and said, ‘Here, throw it away.’ So, I grabbed it to throw it in the trash can, [and] my shirt was on fire,” the youngster said.
What the boys didn't realise was that they had used isopropyl alcohol, which creates an invisible flame when ignited. This meant the fire was still burning even when they couldn't see it.
Caden suffered second-to-third-degree burns across 11 percent of his body.
The boys’ mother, Christina Ballard, was on the other side of the house when the incident happened. She only learned about the emergency when a friend told her the boys had called 911.
“He was just face, chest, arms, stomach covered in burns. It looked like his skin had been melted away,” Christina recalled. “They like to listen to the story times on TikTok, you know, the Reddit stories. So I never expected things to go the way they went.”
Caden's brother was quick to act, pulling off his brother’s shirt and telling him to stop, drop and roll to extinguish the flames.
“I don’t know how you were brave enough to reach into the flames and pull the shirt off of your brother. But I thank God every single day that you were brave enough to do that,” Christina said.
Caden was immediately rushed to a burns unit in Dallas and is now being transferred to a specialised children's burn facility in Galveston.
He has already undergone surgery and faces weeks of intensive care, recovery, and physical therapy ahead.
A GoFundMe page has been set up on behalf of Caden's family.
“Caden is a strong and determined young man, but this journey will be long and painful,” the page read.
“His parents are faithfully by his side, but the emotional weight is compounded by financial strain — extended hospital stays, time away from work, travel back and forth to Dallas, and bills piling up at home.”
The fundraising page has already collected nearly $1,500 from supporters wanting to help the family through this difficult time.
Christina is now using her family's traumatic experience to warn other parents about the very real dangers of viral social media trends, saying: “We got very lucky; unfortunately, it’s bad, but Caden and I are very lucky that it wasn’t a lot worse.”