TikTok has been sued by the mother and father of 4 British youngsters believed to have died after participating 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 trying the so-called “blackout problem”.
The US-based Social Media Victims Legislation Middle filed the wrongful loss of life lawsuit in opposition to TikTok and its guardian firm ByteDance on behalf of the youngsters’s mother and father on Thursday.
The BBC has requested TikTok for remark.
The criticism was filed within the Superior Court docket 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 have been “the foreseeable results of ByteDance’s engineered addiction-by-design and programming selections”, which have been “geared toward pushing youngsters into maximizing their engagement with TikTok by any means needed”.
And it accuses ByteDance of getting “created dangerous dependencies in every little one” by its design and “flooded them with a seemingly infinite stream of harms”.
“These weren’t harms the youngsters looked for or wished to see when their use of TikTok started,” it claims.
The households’ lawsuit comes as query marks cling over the way forward for TikTok within the US.
President Donald Trump signed an government order in January to increase the deadline for the app to be banned within the nation until 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.
Ms Dance, together with Lisa Kenevan, mom of 13-year-old Isaac, has tried to boost consciousness 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 taking part in a web based problem, has sought to acquire information from TikTok that might present readability round his loss of life.
She has been campaigning for “Jools’ Legislation”, which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die.
“It is my one aim to try to make one thing optimistic out of the lack of Jools, not simply me however for the households who’ve already misplaced youngsters and households going ahead,” she advised the BBC in January.
