Parents sue TikTok over child deaths allegedly caused by ‘blackout challenge’
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.Matthew Bergman, the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said: “It’s no coincidence that three of the four children who died from self-suffocation after being exposed to the dangerous and deadly TikTok blackout challenge lived in the same city and that they all fit a similar demographic.“TikTok’s algorithm purposely targeted these children with dangerous content to increase their engagement time on the platform and drive revenue.
It was a clear and deliberate business decision by TikTok that cost these four children their lives,”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 complaint was filed in the superior court of the state of Delaware on behalf of Archie’s mother, Hollie Dance, Isaac’s mother, Lisa Kenevan, Jools’s mother, Ellen Roome, and Maia’s father, Liam Walsh,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.The firm states that the parents believed TikTok was a “fun, silly and safe platform designed for kids and young people”, and claims that the children involved were “confident” and “well-behaved”, and did not have prior mental health problems.The Social Media Victims Law Center represents families who believe their children have been harmed by social media, and has filed several other lawsuits against TikTok over the deaths of children and young adults, including for promoting videos showing suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content.
The law firm helped Tawainna Anderson sue the platform in 2022 after her 10-year-old daughter, Nylah, died after allegedly taking part in the blackout challenge.A US appeals court overturned a lower court’s dismissal of her case in August 2024.In February last year, a coroner ruled that Archie had “died as a result of a prank or experiment gone wrong” at his home in Southend-on-Sea.He said he could not rule out the blackout challenge but noted that there were “hundreds of other possibilities”.Jools’s mother has campaigned for parents to be given the legal right to access their children’s social media accounts to help understand why they died, after she was left with no clues as to her son’s death in 2022.
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.
The Guide #177: Son of a Century is a gripping, timely series – and maybe the end of the antihero drama
Retired history teachers everywhere must be quietly lamenting that Mussolini: Son of the Century wasn’t around when they were building their Twentieth Century Europe modules. Joe Wright’s Italian-language TV adaptation of Antonio Scurati’s novel, which has just arrived in full on Sky and Now, is a world away from the fuzzy VHS recordings of old war documentaries that served as the multimedia element of many of our GCSE history classes.Following Il Duce’s faltering first steps towards domination, from establishing his fascist party, through the March on Rome to the installation of a dictatorship in Italy, Wright’s eight-part drama has the fidgety energy of a student trying to make history more exciting and cool. “What if the scene where blackshirted goons violently attack that socialist paper was shot in a stylised, Tarantino-ish way?”; “Could we replace the characters with puppets here?”; “Wouldn’t it be cool if Mussolini played with a grenade on his desk in this scene?”; “How about we soundtrack the whole thing with frenetic big beat scored by one of the Chemical Brothers?”Amazingly, for the most part this approach works well. The restlessness of Wright’s direction feels suited to the roiling, change-filled era of Italian history it depicts, when socialism and fascism were vying to usurp the old order, and all manner of literary, technological and artistic movements were bubbling up
Seth Meyers on Elon Musk’s US takeover: ‘A billionaire coup’
Late-night hosts spoke about the damage being caused by Donald Trump’s new right-hand man as well as the president’s unconvincing attempts to show off his Christian side.On Late Night, Seth Meyers started by saying that despite the recent election, “the real president is Elon Musk”, who has shown he is in control despite being “very unpopular” with voters.He said the billionaire has been launching a “de facto takeover of the federal government” with his “team of unaccountable hatchet men”.Recent polls have shown that Americans are unhappy with Musk’s increased control but Trump has been defending him during typically hard-to-understand rambles, resembling “a real-time version of Mad Libs”.Musk has been frantically figuring out what to keep and what to cut within the government, with Meyers showing that he ultimately wants a “wholesale removal of regulations”
‘This is Black hair’: technological advances are making waves in animation
Afro-textured hair in animation has long been oversimplified, but new algorithms now capture its true formFor decades, afro-textured hair animation has lagged behind illustrations of straight hairstyles. Renderings of Black characters do not typically represent the plethora of Black hair styles or specific attributes of Black hair: the kink in their strands, the spring in their curls. But now, for the first time ever, researchers have developed algorithms to depict coily, Black hair in computer graphics, a huge step for the portrayal of Black characters.The findings have been published in a new study, which will be available to animators worldwide. The study is a collaboration between researchers at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Cruz
Aacta awards 2025: Robbie Williams’ Better Man and Boy Swallows Universe dominate Australian film and TV prizes
The Netflix adaptation of Trent Dalton’s bestseller Boy Swallows Universe has dominated the annual Aacta (Australian Academy of Cinema, Television and the Arts) awards, winning 12 of its record-breaking 22 nominations.The Aacta president, Russell Crowe, hosted the awards ceremony at Hota (Home of the Arts) on the Gold Coast on Friday, which featured a live performance by Robbie Williams, whose musical biopic, Better Man, collected nine awards on the night.Paul Kelly performed his tear-jerker How to Make Gravy, the 1996 ballad that inspired a feature film of the same name released last year, which won just one category – best original song.Boy Swallows Universe, Dalton’s semi-autobiographical story about a boy sucked into Brisbane’s criminal underbelly, won best miniseries, best screenplay in television (John Collee) and all four acting categories for television drama, including best lead actor for teenager Felix Cameron, who played the main character, Eli Bell.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningBoy Swallows Universe also won best lead actress in a drama for Phoebe Tonkin, for her role as Frankie, Eli’s mother, while best supporting actor went to Lee Tiger Halley who played Eli’s older brother Gus, and Deborah Mailman won best supporting actress for her role as Eli’s school guidance counsellor
Steve Coogan avoids lengthy driving ban after pleading need to film The Trip
The actor and comedian Steve Coogan has avoided a six-month driving ban after being caught speeding at 97mph, arguing it would prevent him from filming a new series of his TV show The Trip.Coogan, 59, was captured travelling over the 70mph speed limit in a Range Rover on the M6 near Telford in Shropshire on 29 July last year.In a letter to Birmingham magistrates court, reported by the Evening Standard, he urged the court not to disqualify him by adding six more points to the six already accrued on his licence.Drivers can be disqualified from driving for at least six months if they get 12 or more penalty points within three years.The newspaper said he told the court he was expected to film the fifth series of The Trip, which he stars in alongside Rob Brydon, and a lengthy driving ban would mean “the production would likely be unable to proceed”
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘It’s like our country is being run by the maniac from Saw’
Late-night hosts roundly mocked Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip for a real estate development, forcibly removing 2 million Palestinians.On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump made a shock announcement during a press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu: he wanted the US to take ownership of the Gaza Strip for a “fantastic” real estate development.As Jimmy Kimmel explained on Wednesday evening, the “plan” would be to “remove the almost 2 million Palestinians who live there and build a really cool real estate development that we would own and I guess sell to others?”“This is really what he wants to do,” he marveled. “It’s like our country is being run by the maniac from Saw. Donald Jigsaw Trump is running this
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