Two families are suing TikTok after their daughters died last year while attempting the viral “Blackout Challenge.”
ABC News reports the parents of Arriani Jaileen Arroyo, 9, of Wisconsin, and Lalani Walton, 8, of Texas, have joined forces with the Social Media Victims Law Center to file a lawsuit against TikTok. Arroyo and Walton died of suffocation last year after trying the controversial challenge, which 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,” Arriani’s mother Christal Arroyo Roman told ABC. “You’re never gonna hear her voice, you’re never gonna see her smile or hear her say ‘I love you.’”
She added, “We just never thought that there was a darker side to what TikTok allows on its platform.”
The lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s algorithm promoted the challenge to users in an effort “to increase their engagement and maximize TikTok’s profits.”
“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,” the lawsuit reads.
Arriani’s father Heriberto Arroyo Roman hopes the lawsuit raises awareness for TikTok’s 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,” Roman said. “We want to make sure that we can save other kids.”
