TikTok has been sued by the parents of four British teenagers believed to have died after taking part in viral trends that circulated on the video-sharing platform in 2022.
The lawsuit claims Isaac Kenevan, Archie Battersbee, Julian “Jools” Sweeney and Maia Walsh died while attempting the so-called “blackout challenge”.
The US-based Social Media Victims Law Center filed the wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance on behalf of the children’s parents on Thursday.
The BBC has asked TikTok for comment.
The complaint was filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware on behalf of Archie’s mother Hollie Dance, Isaac’s mum Lisa Kenevan, Jools’ mother Ellen Roome and Maia’s dad Liam Walsh.
It claims the deaths were “the foreseeable result of ByteDance’s engineered addiction-by-design and programming decisions”, which were “aimed at pushing children into maximizing their engagement with TikTok by any means necessary”.
And it accuses ByteDance of having “created harmful dependencies in each child” through its design and “flooded them with a seemingly endless stream of harms”.
“These were not harms the children searched for or wanted to see when their use of TikTok began,” it claims.
The families’ lawsuit comes as question marks hang over the future of TikTok in the US.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to extend the deadline for the app to be banned in the country unless sold to another firm.
What does Trump’s executive order mean for TikTok and who might buy it? 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.
Ms Dance, along with Lisa Kenevan, mother of 13-year-old Isaac, has tried to raise awareness about potentially dangerous social media trends in the wake of their childrens’ deaths.
Ellen Roome, who believes her 14-year-old son Jools died after participating in an online challenge, has sought to obtain data from TikTok that could provide clarity around his death.
She has been campaigning for “Jools’ Law”, which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die.
“It’s my one goal to try and make something positive out of the loss of Jools, not just me but for the families who have already lost children and families going forward,” she told the BBC in January.
