After Her 15-Year-Old Son Died Trying a Viral Choking Challenge, This Mom Is Fighting for a Safer Internet (Exclusive)

When her son Mason first asked for a smartphone in high school, Joann Bogard was determined to protect him while he was using it online.

“I put the surveillance apps on, we had conversations,” Bogard, 58, tells PEOPLE. “I thought I had everything in place. But he was a teenager and he was curious.”

The outdoorsy kid “didn’t really like social media,” Bogard recalls. Except YouTube, where Mason liked to watch how-to videos on tying fishing lures.

However, at one point he showed his mom a video of a funny viral challenge. “Right then we were talking, ‘Buddy, some of these challenges can be dangerous.’ ”

Mason Bogard 2008.

Courtesy of Joann Bogard

Just two weeks after that speech, on May 1, 2019, Mason, then a 15-year-old freshman, hugged his dad goodnight, told his mom he loved her and went upstairs to their home in Evansville, Indiana.

After hearing a strange noise, his father checked on him. “He found Mason unconscious, no heartbeat, with a strap around his neck,” Bogard says.

Looking at his phone later, they learned that Mason had recorded himself attempting a “choke challenge” he had seen on YouTube. “But there was no search for that phrase in his history,” says Bogard. “The algorithm spammed it.” He died three days later.

Bogard is one of a growing number of parents who say social media is to blame for harming their children, both physically and mentally.

“It can happen to any child,” says Bogard, who has two other grown children. “Trying to navigate your children’s online world has become impossible. I did everything in my power, but it wasn’t enough. Our story is every parent’s nightmare.”

How Smartphones Are Harming Our Children’s Mental Health: ‘There’s Huge Evidence of Harm’ (Exclusive)

A recent survey found that 50% of parents say their children’s mental health is being damaged by social media. In June, the US surgeon general called for warning labels on social media platforms, saying they were “significantly contributing” to the youth mental health crisis.

“Parents see differences in their children and want to fix it,” Bogard says, adding that parents need “an honest fight to raise our children safely.”

Joann Bogard on January 31, 2024, speaks at a rally in Washington DC

Countess Džemal/Getty

Bogard was among a group of parents who gathered at a congressional hearing in January to confront tech CEOs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg. Several parents who, like Bogard, blame social media for their children’s deaths, held up photos of the children they lost during the hearing. “He saw a sea of ​​pictures of kids walking by,” Bogard said of Zuckerberg.

Parents see some progress. In March, Bogard successfully lobbied her state to help pass an internet safety bill, the Mason Education Act. And she was on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers before the Senate passed the Children’s Online Safety Act on July 30. (The bill now moves to the House of Representatives for a vote.) Now she’s joined a handful of other parents who also say social media has harmed their children in supporting billionaire Frank McCourt and his initiative called Project LIberty to reinvent the Internet with more privacy protections — and to buy TikTok.

Why this billionaire says his bid to buy TikTok will make social media safer for kids (Exclusive)

Joan Bogard (left) with Frank McCourt (second from left) and other parents who blame social media for their children’s deaths.

The Freedom Project

“It would be a new internet where people decide what security features they want,” says Bogard. “You could say ‘My child can’t see this’ — and no one would be able to see your child online.”

If she had that control five years ago, she says, “I have no doubt my son would still be here.”

For more on Bogard’s story, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on stands now.

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Source: HIS Education