TikTok is sued over deaths of two young girls in viral ‘blackout challenge’

Lalani Erika Walton, age 8, desired to achieve “TikTok fame.” Instead, she passed away.

Hers is one of two such tragedies that led to a connected pair of wrongful death lawsuits against the social media juggernaut being filed on Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. According to the lawsuits, the company’s app fed both Lalani and Arriani Jaileen Arroyo, both 9 years old, videos related to the blackout challenge, a trend in which participants attempt to choke themselves unconscious. Both of the young girls died after attempting to participate in the challenge.

The Social Media Victims Law Center, the law firm behind the lawsuits and a self-described “legal resource for parents of children harmed by social media,” claims it’s evidence that TikTok, is a flawed product. According to the Law Center, TikTok promoted videos featuring Lalani and Arriani that were part of the risky trend, is designed to be addictive, and didn’t provide the girls or their parents with adequate safety features all in the name of maximizing ad revenue.

The deaths of the girls are remarkably similar.

According to the Law Center’s complaint, Lalani, a Texas native, was a frequent TikToker who uploaded videos of herself singing and dancing in the hopes of going viral.

According to the lawsuit, her algorithm began showing videos of the self-strangulation blackout challenge sometime in July 2021. According to the lawsuit, Lalani told her family that the bruises that had appeared on her neck midway through that month were the result of a fall. Shortly after, she and her stepmother watched videos that her mother would later discover were blackout challenge videos during a 20-hour car ride.

Lalani’s stepmother took a quick nap after telling her the two could go swimming later when they got home from the trip. However, the lawsuit claims that when her stepmother awoke, she went to Lalani’s bedroom and discovered the young woman “hanging from her bed with a rope around her neck.”

The suit claims that after taking Lalani’s phone and tablet, the police later informed her stepmother that Lalani had been watching blackout challenge videos “on repeat.”

Lalani, it claims, “did not appreciate or understand the dangerous nature of what TikTok was encouraging her to do,” but she “believed that if she posted a video of herself doing the Blackout Challenge, then she would become famous.”

According to the suit, Arriani, from Milwaukee, the other victim also enjoyed posting song and dance videos on TikTok. It goes on to say that she “gradually became obsessed” with the app.

Arriani’s father was working in the basement on February 26, 2021, when her younger brother Edwardo came downstairs and said Arriani wasn’t moving. According to the suit, the two siblings were playing together in Arriani’s bedroom when their father rushed upstairs to check on her and discovered her “hanging from the family dog’s leash.”

She was rushed to the hospital and placed on a ventilator, but it was too late — the girl had lost all brain function and was eventually taken off life support, according to the suit.

The suit goes on to say that “TikTok’s product and its algorithm directed exceedingly and unacceptably dangerous challenges and videos” to Arriani’s feed, encouraging her to “engage and participate in the TikTok Blackout Challenge.”