A story authentically recounts the experience of a 14-year-old girl named Madison Taylor Brooks who briefly died and received a warning from Jesus Christ about the dangers of a life spent looking at screens.
- In July 2025, online users reposted the story of a 14-year-old girl named Madison Taylor Brooks briefly dying for 12 minutes after a car accident, during which time she received a warning from Jesus Christ about a life spent looking at screens.
- The story originated in a video on the Second Life YouTube channel. The clip features artificial intelligence-generated elements, including in the visuals, voice narration, scripting, text description and thumbnail image.
- A disclaimer in the YouTube video’s text description, added after the clip received hundreds of thousands of views, revealed the channel’s owner fabricated the name “Madison Taylor Brooks.” In the disclaimer, the channel owner claimed, without providing evidence, that they received the story in an email and changed names to protect identities.
- The Second Life YouTube channel almost exclusively hosts videos, all featuring AI-generated elements, telling similar inspirational tales of people briefly dying, receiving a warning from Jesus and coming back to tell others about their experience.
- Numerous pieces of data, including several inconsistencies and red flags, as well as a complete lack of news media outlets — Christianity-focused publications included — reporting on the matter, contributed to the conclusion that someone fabricated the story, all for at least the partial goal of online advertising revenue.
In July 2025, online users shared a story about a 14-year-old girl named Madison Taylor Brooks who allegedly briefly died for 12 minutes after a car accident. According to the story, during her near-death experience, Jesus Christ revealed to Brooks the dangers of living a life spent looking at screens on phones, tablets and computers and how those experiences isolate and distract people from real life and God’s presence. The story said that after Brooks recovered, she told her family and friends about her encounter with Jesus, leading them to spend more time with each other and away from screens, and also shared online an audio recording of what users labeled as her “testimony.”
For example, on June 24, a TikTok user posted (archived) the alleged Brooks audio recording. The video, lasting around 13 minutes and receiving more than 700,000 views, displayed a picture of a young girl and a woman closing their eyes and appearing to pray. Other users shared the story either as a video purportedly with Brooks’ narration, or as text, on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube (archived), as well as on at least one blog.
Snopes readers wrote us asking about the veracity of the story. One emailed, “Is the story posted on TikTok about 14 year-old Madison Taylor Brooks dying for 12 minutes true?” Another person asked, “Did Madison Taylor Brooks really die and claim to see Jesus who told her about the dangers of social media?”
The video and text-based posts began, “My name is Madison Taylor Brooks. I’m 14 years old, and on October 17th I died for 12 minutes when our car flipped three times on Highway 29.”
However, a search for more information found inconsistencies and red flags calling into question the origination of the story.
A YouTube user who first posted about Brooks’ purported experience added a disclaimer to their text description, either days or weeks after initially uploading the clip. In that disclaimer, they claimed, without providing evidence, that they received the story via email and changed Brooks’ name to protect her identity. That user also almost exclusively shares many different videos telling similar tales of people briefly dying, talking to Jesus and then returning with a warning. The clips feature artificial intelligence-generated elements, including in their visuals, voice narration, scripting, text descriptions and thumbnail images. Further, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets — including Christianity-focused blogs and publications — reporting about the matter.
The story resembled other past inspirational experiences users posted online after fabricating the tales, at least partly in the pursuit of generating online advertising revenue.
The origins of the story
According to the aforementioned searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo, the oldest posting of the story appeared on the Second Life (@SecondLife03) YouTube channel — not to be confused with the video game of the same name — on May 13. That video (archived) displayed several points initiating YouTube ads, which earn the channel’s owner revenue. The clip received just over 1 million views and featured a title including the initialism “NDE” for near-death experience. It read, “14 Year Girl Dies & What Jesus Revealed About SOCIAL MEDIA Will Shock You – NDE.”
The text description under the video, resembling text generated by an AI tool with its emoji and comma-separated keywords list, featured a disclaimer claiming — without providing evidence — that the channel’s owner received the story in an email. The disclaimer also said that “Madison Taylor Brooks” was a fake name, and that they did not publish the supposed real girl’s name, purportedly to “protect their identity.” It read as follows:
NOTE: This testimony was sent to us via email, and due to copyright and legal reasons, we have changed the names of individuals involved to protect their identity. The core of the story remains untouched—shared with the intent to uplift, inspire, and awaken hearts.
An archived version of the YouTube video page showed that the manager of the channel added the disclaimer only after the clip began receiving hundreds of thousands of views. The video now stands as the most-viewed clip on the channel. Other similar videos hosted on the channel did not feature this same disclaimer.
The channel also does not show any websites or other social media pages, indicating a lack of association with any other online content. Additionally, the “home” page for the channel contained no customization or featured videos — an unusual lack of promoted content for YouTube creators.
Snopes reached out to the channel’s owner via several public video comments — there was no email address listed — to ask questions and will update this article if we learn more information.
‘Brooks’ story powered by AI
AI text-detection websites such as Copyleaks.com, NoteGPT.io, Phrasly.ai and ZeroGPT.com all concluded someone likely generated the video’s script — the same one some users copied and pasted as text into social media posts — with an AI tool. Such AI-detection websites don’t provide absolute conclusions but instead offer data points toward establishing likelihood of the usage of AI tools.
The thumbnail image included with the Second Life YouTube video showed an inauthentic “breaking news” graphic, with no TV network name displayed, featuring a close-up picture of a young girl crying while wearing a gown in a hospital bed. A scan with the Sightengine image-analysis website determined a 99% likelihood someone generated the photo with an AI tool.
(@SecondLife03/YouTube)
Further, the narrator’s voice in the Second Life YouTube video, the popular TikTok clip and other posts resembled AI-generated vocals. For example, at the very end of the YouTube and TikTok videos, the narrator stumbles through the final words with unnatural tone changes, saying, “My name is Madison Taylor Brooks. I died on Oct. 17, and Jesus sent me back to tell you this.” The sound of the voice shared at least slight similarities with the “Amy” voice offered by the TopMediai.com generative-AI website.
Inconsistencies and red flags
Users who shared the story did so with pictures of different girls. This usage of various girls’ photos, some AI-generated, furthered the inauthenticity of the entire rumor.
The many faces — some AI-generated — of “Madison Taylor Brooks.”
Also, again, the story featured a lack of identifying details, including a year missing from the alleged accident date of Oct. 17, as well as no city or state name where the incident occurred. The video only mentioned Highway 29 — possibly U.S. Highway 29, which spans from Maryland to Florida — as the location of the accident.
Second Life’s many AI-created, near-death experience videos
Other popular videos hosted on the Second Life YouTube channel told of numerous alleged near-death experiences involving Jesus warning individuals of dangers. For example, a video (archived) from June 20 displayed the title, “Navy SEAL Dies in Iran & Returns With TERRIFYING Warning About Nuclear War – NDE.” That clip received more than 833,000 views, and it featured an introduction showing a visual of an AI-generated person.
Other videos (archived) hosted on the channel — all including AI-generated thumbnail images — featured similar introductions with visuals of AI-generated people. Some of the clips included stories of people allegedly returning from speaking with Jesus about warnings regarding World War III, U.S. President Donald Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk.
The most recent video, as of this writing, claimed a 38-year old woman named “Katie Anne Phillips” — allegedly a victim of the Texas flash floods from early July — received a warning from Jesus about “the modern world drowning in distraction, fear and spiritual emptiness.” That video, published on July 9 and beginning with a visual of an AI-generated woman — whose shirt color changes between shots — displayed the title, “Texas Flood Victim Dies & Jesus Shows Her EXACTLY What’s Coming Next to America – NDE.”
Another video from July 8 featured visuals of the same AI-generated woman, except with the name of “Lisa Thompson.”
For further reading, a previous fact check examined an AI-generated YouTube video showing Trump playing a guitar while singing, “This Is Who Jesus Is to Me.”
