Fri, 07 Feb 2025

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 TikTok sued by parents of UK teens after alleged challenge deaths

The US-based Social Media Victims Law Center filed the wrongful death lawsuit on Thursday.

* TikTok is being sued by the parents of four British teenagers who believe their children died after participating in a viral trend on the platform.
* The lawsuit claims that Isaac Kenevan, Archie Battersbee, Julian "Jools" Sweeney and Maia Walsh died while attempting the "blackout challenge".
* The US-based Social Media Victims Law Center has filed the wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance on behalf of the children's parents.
* Searches for videos or hashtags related to the challenge on TikTok are blocked, but this has been in place since 2020.
* The complaint claims that the deaths were a "foreseeable result" of ByteDance's "engineered addiction-by-design and programming decisions".
* The lawsuit accuses ByteDance of creating harmful dependencies in each child through its design and flooding them with a seemingly endless stream of harms.
* Ellen Roome, Jools' mother, is campaigning for "Jools' Law", which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die.
* TikTok says it prohibits dangerous content or challenges on the platform and directs users who search for hashtags or videos to its Safety Centre.
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