Parents who believe their children died after taking part in a TikTok challenge have been told data from the youngsters accounts may have been deleted. The families of Archie Battersbee, Isaac Kenevan, Julian “Jools” Sweeney and Maia Walsh, who were all aged between 12 and 14, have taken legal action against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance in the US, in an attempt to compel the firm to release their children’s data
But an executive from TikTok has told the BBC that it might not be available any longer. The lawsuit for wrongful death alleges that the four youngsters died while trying a so-called “blackout challenge”.
The families want access to their children’s account data to “get answers” about their tragic deaths. However, Giles Dennington, senior government relations manager at TikTok, told BBC Radio 5 Live “there are some things we simply don’t have”.
After the lawsuit was lodged against TikTok last week, Ellen Roome, mother of 14-year-old Jools, told PA news agency that she had been striving to get her son’s data from TikTok as she “just wants answers” about his death. She said the data was “the only piece that we haven’t looked at”.
Ms Roome expressed her shock upon discovering that she “wasn’t entitled” to Jools’ data, and was informed by TikTok that a court order was necessary to release it. She is now campaigning for legislation to allow parents access to their children’s social media accounts if they pass away.
Speaking to PA, she described the struggle to understand why her son had died as “horrendously difficult”. But when questioned about why parents in these cases hadn’t been able to see the data, Mr Dennington explained: “This is really complicated stuff because it relates to the legal requirements around when we remove data and we have, under data protection laws, requirements to remove data quite quickly. That impacts on what we can do.”
He went on to say that the obligations to delete data under data protection laws “can impact on what is available” and pointed out that “everyone expects that when we are required by law to delete some data, we will have deleted it”. He clarified: “So this is a more complicated situation than us just having something we’re not giving access to.
“Obviously it’s really important that case plays out as it should and that people get as many answers as are available,” he continued. He said the social media firm has “had conversations with some of those parents already to try and help them in that”.
The lawsuit brought forward by the parents accuses TikTok of promoting hazardous prank and challenge videos to children to boost engagement on the platform. TikTok, however, maintains that it does not permit content that displays or encourages dangerous activities or challenges, claiming that it proactively detects 99% of such content and removes it before anyone reports it.
Mr Dennington also addressed the specific “blackout challenge” mentioned in the lawsuit, stating that it predates TikTok. He added that the company has “never found any evidence that the blackout challenge has been trending on the platform”.
He continued: “Indeed since 2020 (we) have completely banned even being able to search for the words ‘blackout challenge’ or variants of it, to try and make sure that no-one is coming across that kind of content We don’t want anything like that on the platform and we know users don’t want it either.”
“This is a really, really tragic situation but we are trying to make sure that we are constantly doing everything we can to make sure that people are safe on TikTok.”