Seven children died from TikTok‘s blackout challenge.
TikTok is facing multiple lawsuits from parents who say their children died of suffocation while attempting the blackout challenge after the app showed them videos of other people doing the challenge.
A lawsuit filed against the company in June alleges that at least seven children have died over the past year while attempting the challenge, while the complaint states that “this challenge encourages others to buckle up.” pants, bag straps, or something similar until they lose consciousness.”
The Verge writes that from the lawsuits it is said that the age of the dead children is under 15 years old.
The most recent lawsuit was filed by the parents of eight-year-old Lalani Walton and nine-year-old Arriani Arroyo. But the deaths of several other children who have also died attempting the challenge are cited there, as evidence that TikTok was aware of this problem.
The mother of ten-year-old Nylah Anderson from Pennsylvania is also suing the company, claiming the app “promotes extremely dangerous and unacceptable challenges”.
In response to this lawsuit, TikTok said that they have blocked the search for the “blackout” challenge from users, and instead, users are shown a warning text on the screen that says: “some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing or even mounted,” and then link to an in-app page for rating and warning challenges.
