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

Joann Bogard's son Mason died in 2019 after attempting a choking challenge he saw online. Now, she wants laws to change — and supports a new bid to buy TikTok

When her son Mason first asked for a smartphone in middle school, Joann Bogard was determined to keep him safe when he was using it online.

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

An outdoorsy kid, “he wasn’t really into social media,” Bogard recalls. Except for YouTube, where Mason liked to watch how-to videos on tying fishing lures.

At one point, however, he showed his mom a video of a funny viral challenge. “We had a conversation right then: ‘Buddy, some of these challenges can be dangerous.’ ”

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

After hearing a strange noise, his dad checked on him. “He found Mason unconscious, no heart-beat, with a belt around his neck,” Bogard says.

Looking at his phone later, they learned Mason had filmed himself trying a “choking challenge” that he’d seen on YouTube. “But there was no search for the phrase in his history,” says Bogard. “An algorithm fed it to him unsolicited.” He died three days later.

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

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

Related: How Smartphones Are Hurting Our Kids’ Mental Health: ‘There’s Massive Evidence of Harm‘ (Exclusive)

A recent poll found that 50% of parents say their children’s mental health has suffered as a result of social media. In June the U.S. Surgeon General called for warning labels on social media platforms, saying they’re an “important contributor” to the youth mental health crisis.

“Parents are seeing the differences in their children, and they want to fix it,” Bogard says, adding that parents need “a fair fight in raising our kids safely."

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

Parents are seeing some progress. Bogard successfully lobbied her state to help pass an Internet safety bill, Mason’s Education Act, in March. And she was on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers before the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act on July 30. (The legislation now moves to the House for a vote.)

Now she's joined with several other parents who also say social media harmed their children in supporting a push by billionaire Frank McCourt and his initiative called Project LIberty to reinvent the Internet with more privacy protections — and to buy TikTok.

Related: Why This Billionaire Says His Bid to Buy TikTok Will Make Social Media Safer For Kids (Exclusive)

“It would be a new Internet, where people decide the safety features they want," Bogard says. "You could say, ‘My kid can’t see this’ — and nobody could see your kid 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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