The parents of four British teenagers have filed a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging that their children died as a result of the viral 'blackout challenge'. The challenge, which became popular on social media in 2021, involves self-suffocation until the participant loses consciousness.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the Delaware superior court by the US-based Social Media Victims Law Center, names TikTok and its parent company ByteDance as defendants. The children are Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian 'Jools' Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, all of whom died in 2022.
Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said: 'It’s no coincidence that three of the four children who died from self-suffocation after being exposed to the dangerous and deadly TikTok blackout challenge lived in the same city and that they all fit a similar demographic. TikTok’s algorithm purposely targeted these children with dangerous content to increase their engagement time on the platform and drive revenue.'
TikTok has stated that searches for videos or hashtags related to the challenge have been blocked since 2020, and that it prohibits dangerous content. However, the lawsuit claims the platform 'pushes dangerous prank and challenge videos to children based on their age and location in order to increase engagement time to generate higher revenues'.
The parents include Archie's mother Hollie Dance, Isaac's mother Lisa Kenevan, Jools's mother Ellen Roome, and Maia's father Liam Walsh. The lawsuit accuses TikTok of being 'a dangerous and addictive product that markets itself as fun and safe for children, while lulling parents into a false sense of security'.
This is not the first legal action against TikTok over the blackout challenge. In 2022, the Social Media Victims Law Center helped Tawainna Anderson sue the platform after her 10-year-old daughter Nylah died. A US appeals court overturned a lower court's dismissal of that case in August 2024.
