Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of a nine-year-old child who at­tempt­ed a “chal­lenge” on so­cial me­dia site Tik­Tok, on­ly to be found dead hours lat­er by his rel­a­tives.

Em­manuel Po­teon was dis­cov­ered by his grand­moth­er at their Mal­oney Gar­dens home on Mon­day evening two hours af­ter she no­ticed he was miss­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 2 pm on Mon­day, Em­manuel’s grand­moth­er raised an alarm about his where­abouts.

Search­es of the street where he lived and the house were done but it would take the fam­i­ly three hours to find him in a bath­room in the home’s guest bed­room.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day but rel­a­tives de­clined to speak, say­ing they are too dis­traught by the loss.

One of Em­manuel’s neigh­bours, Roy Oliv­er, said the child’s death shat­tered the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Every­body shocked, I saw him up to Sun­day, evening, he went by the neigh­bour for two man­go, he pass back and ask “How you go­ing?” I say I al­right…that thing mash-up around here yes, if you see the lit­tle boy how nice,” Oliv­er said.

Em­manuel was a Stan­dard Three pupil of the Ca­roni Hin­du School.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Act­ing Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Vi­jay Ma­haraj said chil­dren are un­der pres­sure and he has seen its ef­fects first hand. He said schools need to be re­opened.

“He (Em­manuel) was one of our chil­dren. Chil­dren are be­com­ing para­noid at home, they are un­der a tremen­dous amount of pres­sure,” Ma­haraj said.

He said au­thor­i­ties need to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to the men­tal health of chil­dren.

Mean­while, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is­sued a re­lease yes­ter­day, call­ing for par­ents and guardians to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to the pop­u­lar trends on so­cial me­dia that can be harm­ful to their chil­dren.

The au­thor­i­ty said par­ents should al­so hold reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren on the im­por­tance of not tak­ing part or im­i­tat­ing so­cial me­dia trends or chal­lenges be­cause of the dan­gers they might be in.

In an in­ter­view with Guardia Me­dia yes­ter­day, Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Evan­ge­list, Dar­ren Dho­ray said so­cial me­dia chal­lenges have been around for sev­er­al years.

He urged par­ents to be mind­ful of the age re­stric­tions on so­cial me­dia plat­forms—say­ing those were put in place to pro­tect young, naive users.