“Parents sue TikTok over child deaths allegedly caused by ‘blackout challenge’”, 7 February 2025

The parents of four British teenagers have sued TikTok over the deaths of their children, which they claim were the result of the viral “blackout challenge”.

The lawsuit claims Isaac Kenevan, 13, Archie Battersbee, 12, Julian “Jools” Sweeney, 14, and Maia Walsh, 13, died in 2022 while attempting the “blackout challenge”, which became popular on social media in 2021.

The US-based Social Media Victims Law Center filed the wrongful death lawsuit against the social media platform TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, on behalf of the children’s parents on Thursday…

According to TikTok, searches for videos or hashtags related to the challenge have been blocked since 2020. The platform says it prohibits dangerous content or challenges, and aims to remove these before they are reported, as well as directing those who search for hashtags or videos to its safety centre...

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”. It says TikTok “pushes dangerous prank and challenge videos to children based on their age and location in order to increase engagement time on the platform to generate higher revenues”.

The lawsuit further claims that TikTok has told lawmakers around the world that the blackout challenge had never been on its platform and “works to discount credible reports of children being exposed to and dying because of blackout and similar challenge videos on the platform”. It notes that other dangerous challenges that have been found on TikTok include those involving medications, hot water and fire…

Changes to the Online Safety Act, which come into force in the UK this year, explicitly require social media companies to protect children from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms, as well as to proactively prevent children from seeing the highest-risk forms of content.