TikTok sued by parents of UK teens after alleged challenge deaths

TikTok is being sued by the mother and father of 4 British youngsters who imagine their youngsters died after collaborating in viral tendencies that circulated on the video-sharing platform in 2022.

The lawsuit claims Isaac Kenevan, Archie Battersbee, Julian “Jools” Sweeney and Maia Walsh died whereas making an attempt the so-called “blackout problem”.

The US-based Social Media Victims Legislation Heart filed the wrongful dying lawsuit in opposition to TikTok and its father or mother firm ByteDance on behalf of the youngsters’s mother and father on Thursday.

Searches for movies or hashtags associated to the problem on TikTok are blocked.

Based on the agency, this block has been in place since 2020.

TikTok says it prohibits harmful content material or challenges on the platform, and directs those that seek for hashtags or movies to its Security Centre.

The criticism was filed within the Superior Courtroom of the State of Delaware on behalf of Archie’s mom Hollie Dance, Isaac’s mum Lisa Kenevan, Jools’ mom Ellen Roome and Maia’s dad Liam Walsh.

It claims the deaths had been “the foreseeable results of ByteDance’s engineered addiction-by-design and programming choices”, which had been “geared toward pushing youngsters into maximizing their engagement with TikTok by any means obligatory”.

And it accuses ByteDance of getting “created dangerous dependencies in every baby” by means of its design and “flooded them with a seemingly limitless stream of harms”.

“These weren’t harms the youngsters looked for or needed to see when their use of TikTok started,” it claims.

Ellen Roome, who believes her 14-year-old son Jools died after taking part in a web-based problem, has sought to acquire information from TikTok that would present readability round his dying.

She has been campaigning for “Jools’ Legislation”, which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die. It was debated in parliament on 13 January 2025.

“Mother and father want to concentrate on the risks of social media,” she informed the BBC.

“I believed TikTok was foolish dances and foolish challenges like standing in your palms and placing your t-shirt on upside-down – Jools and I did a number of of these challenges – as a result of we simply thought they had been enjoyable.

“It is not that – there’s some dangerous materials there, and I believe mother and father must be conscious and actually, if they’ll, get their youngsters to point out them their cellphone.”

She stated she believed it was “morally improper” that TikTok is not going to give her entry to her son’s social media account.

“[TikTok] might have handed over the info and stated, ‘right here bereaved mother and father, I hope you get some solutions’,” she stated.

“It is taking us going to court docket within the US to attempt to try this, and I believe that is morally improper.”

Leanda Barrington-Leach, govt director of marketing campaign group 5Rights Basis, claimed this was “the horrific penalties of tech firms placing revenue above youngsters’s lives”.

The households’ lawsuit comes as query marks hold over the way forward for TikTok within the US.

President Donald Trump signed an govt order in January to increase the deadline for the app to be banned within the nation except bought to a different agency.

A coroner concluded in January 2024 that Hollie Dance’s son Archie died aged 12 after a “prank or experiment” went wrong at their home in Southend-on-Sea in April 2022 – and stated there was no proof he was doing a web-based problem on the time, as his mom believed.

Ms Dance, together with Lisa Kenevan, mom of 13-year-old Isaac, has tried to lift consciousness about potentially dangerous social media trends in the wake of their childrens’ deaths.

Lisa Kenevan, talking about Issac on BBC Breakfast in Could, described him as a “glad, regular boy” who “needed to take care of his mum and pa”.

She stated he was as an “extremely inquisitive, extremely smart” baby who needed to grasp how issues labored – main him to aim the blackout problem.

It’s one in all a number of viral social media tendencies which have resulted in warnings from schools and experts about their dangers.

TikTok stated in 2021 it might strengthen its detection and enforcement of rules around dangerous online challenges, and reportedly blocked some searches for the blackout problem.

But it surely has confronted quite a few lawsuits and accusations from mother and father of deceased youngsters claiming it beneficial dangerous content material to them.

The Social Media Victims Legislation Heart helped Tawainna Anderson sue the platform in 2022 after her 10-year-old daughter Nyla died after allegedly collaborating within the blackout problem.

A US appeals court docket overturned a decrease court docket’s dismissal of her case in August 2024.