Last year, an American family filed a lawsuit against TikTok after their 10-year-old daughter choked to death while purportedly engaging in a Blackout challenge on the video-sharing site.
According to a formal lawsuit filed in federal court, Nylah Anderson was discovered unconscious in her bedroom in suburban Philadelphia in December 2021.
She spent five days in a critical care unit before dying to her injuries after completing a viral “blackout challenge.”
Tawainna Anderson, her mother, claimed TikTok and its parent firm ByteDance of carelessness and “defective design,” claiming that her daughter took the challenge after seeing a TikTok video and died of asphyxiation.
She claimed the dangerous dare “was thrust in front” of her TikTok feed by an algorithm tailored to a 10-year-interests.
According to the complaint, “Algorithm determined that the deadly blackout challenge was well-tailored and likely to be of interest to 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, and she died as a result.”
Users were urged to choke themselves until they passed out and then regain consciousness on video in the “blackout challenge.” Similar fatalities have been linked to the challenge in the past.
“This disturbing challenge, which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform,” the platform said in a previous statement in response to Anderson’s murder.
“I cannot stop replaying this day in my head,” Ms Anderson said during a press conference.
“The unbreakable bond in our family is now shattered and void,” she said, describing her daughter as an active, happy, healthy, and very clever young lady who spoke three languages.
“It is time that these dangerous challenges come to an end so that other families don’t experience the heartbreak that we live everyday,” she added.
A forensic study of Nylah’s phone revealed that the app was in use when she was discovered unconscious, according to Ms Anderson’s counsel.
According to the lawsuit “Nylah endured hellacious suffering as she struggled and fought for breath and slowly asphyxiated until near the point of death.”
According to the complaint, the challenge is tied to at least four additional fatalities of youngsters who took the dare.
Young users have been seen climbing pyramids of stacked milk crates, licking toilet seats for a coronavirus challenge, and eating corncobs hooked to power drills as a result of the increased popularity of social media platforms and aggressive algorithms.
The lawsuit claims that “Social media superpowers like the TikTok defendants have seized the opportunity presented by the digital wild west to manipulate and control the behavior of vulnerable children to maximize attention dedicated to their social media platforms and thus maximize revenues and profits, all while shirking any safety responsibilities whatsoever.”
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