Grieving UK Parents Sue TikTok Over Child Deaths

Five British families are taking on TikTok in a landmark US court case, alleging the social media giant's algorithms promoted dangerous content that contributed to the deaths of their children. The case, filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, centers around the so-called "blackout challenge," a viral stunt that encourages participants to choke themselves until they lose consciousness. Though the challenge has been banned on TikTok since 2020, the parents believe their children encountered it on the platform—and they want answers.

The families, including Ellen Roome from Cheltenham, are united by a shared tragedy. Each lost a child—Julian "Jools" Sweeney (14), Isaac Kenevan (13), Archie Battersbee (12), Maia Walsh (13), and Noah Gibson (11)—in circumstances they believe are linked to the blackout challenge. The deaths occurred between December 2021 and October 2022, with each child found unresponsive at home. In some cases, siblings or parents attempted resuscitation, but to no avail.

For these parents, grief has been compounded by uncertainty. "I'd rather not do this. I'd rather I was left to grieve, but I'm stuck in a tunnel and I can't get out," said Liam Walsh, Maia's father, to Sky News. Louise Gibson, Noah's mother, echoed this sentiment, explaining she never thought to check social media for clues about her son's final hours. "When I was checking Noah's phone, I was looking for messages from school friends. I was looking for bullying. I never thought to check social media to see what he'd been looking at," she said.

The legal action, brought with the help of the Social Media Victims Law Centre, seeks to hold TikTok and its parent company ByteDance accountable. The lawsuit claims the children's deaths were "the foreseeable result of ByteDance's engineered addiction-by-design and programming decisions," which allegedly pushed children to maximize engagement "by any means necessary," as reported by the BBC. The families are not seeking financial compensation; rather, they want access to their children's social media data to understand what they were exposed to before their deaths.

Ellen Roome has become a prominent voice in the campaign, both in court and in the public sphere. She is also advocating for "Jools' Law," proposed legislation that would allow parents access to their deceased children's social media accounts. "It's about time we held them to account and said 'what are you showing our children?'" Roome told the BBC. She has described the ordeal as "draining" and "emotionally exhausting," emphasizing that parents should not have to "cross continents" to obtain such vital information.

Currently, TikTok maintains that it cannot provide the requested data, citing data privacy laws that require deletion of personal information. A spokesperson for the company told Sky News, "Our deepest sympathies remain with these families. We strictly prohibit content that promotes or encourages dangerous behaviour. Using robust detection systems and dedicated enforcement teams to proactively identify and remove this content, we remove 99% that's found to break these rules before it is reported to us." TikTok also insists that the blackout challenge has never trended on its platform and that any such content is swiftly removed.

The company is now seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that the alleged harm occurred in the UK and that US law, including the First Amendment, protects platforms from liability for third-party content. This first hearing, scheduled for Friday, January 16, 2026, is a "motion to dismiss." If TikTok's motion fails, the case will move to the discovery phase, potentially compelling the company to release internal records and the children's account data—if it still exists.

For the parents, the stakes are deeply personal. Roome, who lost her only child, Jools, in April 2022, has said, "What happens when we get to the end? What's our purpose? Because I'm no longer a parent. I don't have a purpose. I no longer have my job. I no longer have a partner. I no longer have a child. So when I get to end of this, then what happens?" The search for answers has become all-consuming, putting their grieving process on hold. Hollie Dance, Archie's mother, explained, "You're not allowed to grieve. You haven't started to grieve. You have that initial grief, that initial shock but when you don't know what happened to your child, it's very hard to find closure or come to any kind of sense about it all."

Some coroners have ruled out suicide in these cases, instead citing accidental death or failed pranks. For example, an inquest into Jools' death returned a narrative verdict and ruled out suicide, while Archie's coroner concluded he died after a "prank or experiment" went wrong. Still, the precise circumstances remain unclear, fueling the parents' determination to access their children's digital histories.

Roome has been especially critical of TikTok's unwillingness to share data. In an interview with The Mirror, she said, "They have no morals. They don't seem interested in us as parents. If they had nothing to hide, why would they not just say: 'Here you go, parents, here's your child's social media data. I hope you get some answers.' The fact that they won't give us our children's data, to me, says, well, what are you hiding? Why wouldn't you release it?" She finds it "ridiculous" that families must sue in the US to access their children's data when they live in the UK, adding, "It's crazy, but the English system isn't set up to be able to sue properly."

The movement for greater transparency and accountability is gaining momentum beyond the courtroom. Roome's campaign for Jools' Law has found support in Parliament, with Baroness Beeban Kidron proposing an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to make data preservation automatic upon a child's death. Kidron told The Mirror, "Officials and governments have let these families down—they must make it automatic and they must listen to the experience of families. For the state to let you down when you are at the worst moment when your child has died—is cruelty upon tragedy."

Matthew Bergman, the attorney for the Social Media Victims Law Centre, emphasized the bipartisan nature of the issue, telling the BBC, "Whether a person is liberal or a conservative, or republican or democrat, we all love our kids and we can come together on this. We appear to be doing so and it's very gratifying." He believes a combination of legislation, civil justice, and public opinion can drive change and protect more children from online harm.

As the legal battle unfolds, the families' fight for answers and accountability has become a rallying point for broader concerns about social media's impact on children. The outcome of the Delaware case could set a precedent for how tech companies respond to tragedies linked to their platforms—and whether bereaved families will finally get the answers they so desperately seek.