Two families are suing TikTok because their kids died from the viral “blackout challenge.”
The parents of Arriani Jaileen Arroyo (9) and Lalani Walton (8) are filing a lawsuit against the app. The two families have teamed up with the Social Media Victims Law Center to bring Justice to their children.
Last year, Arroyo and Walton died of suffocation after trying the challenge. The “blackout challenge” encourages users to choke themselves until they pass out.
“This is not easy, to wake up every day and know that your little girl is never coming back,” Arroyo’s mother tells ABC. “You’re never gonna hear her voice. You’re never gonna see her smile or hear her say ‘I love you.’”
She continued, “We just never thought that there was a darker side to what TikTok allows on its platform.”
The families lawsuit claim that the social media app’s algorithm is set to promote the challenge to “increase their engagement and maximize TikTok’s profits.”
The lawsuit states, “TikTok outrageously took no and/or completely inadequate action to extinguish and prevent the spread of the Blackout Challenge. And specifically to prevent its algorithm from directing children to the Blackout Challenge. Despite notice and/or foreseeability that such a failure would inevitably lead to more injuries and deaths, including those of children.”
Arroyo’s father hopes the lawsuit will bring awareness to these dangerous viral challenges.
“We just want people to be aware because we don’t want no other children out there to be a statistic of this situation again,” he said. “We want to make sure that we can save other kids.”
