THE mum of Archie Battersbee fears that 82 other children have died taking part in the online challenge that she believes may be responsible for the death of her son, as she urges social media firms to do more to tackle the issue.

Hollie Dance, 46, from Southend, is demanding that social media giants do more to remove content about so-called online challenges, and do more to prevent young people being able to view the content so freely.

Archie, 12, died on August 6 after life support was withdrawn and following a lengthy legal dispute.

The youngster had been in a coma since April 7 after an incident at home, with his mum fearing he had taken part in an online challenge.

Ms Dance said: “It’s widely available on the internet that 82 other children have died due to this challenge and there’s a lot of information about this on Google too.

“I think there needs to be more research into exactly how many children have been injured by this. I think it’s easier now for children to do these sort of things.

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“I think social media companies, police and parents need to work together to work out how best to tackle the issue.

“I think the people uploading these videos should be prosecuted and accept responsibility and the social media firms should make it clear this will happen.

“It’s not acceptable that you have adults showing children how to do these challenges.”

The mum insisted that parents need to be more aware of the material that children are seeing online, and is now offering to visit schools and hold meetings with parents to warn them of the dangers.

She added: “It’s extremely important we see change and is a life and death situation.

“It’s highly urgent and we shouldn’t see anyone else go through what we have. It needs addressing urgently.

“It could be good to address it in schools and I am happy to go around schools and warn children and tell Archie’s story.”

The grieving mother added that it must be easier for users to report inappropriate videos, and that content should be removed much more quickly if it breaches updated guidelines