The family of a 9 year old girl is filing a lawsuit against the popular social media platform Tik Tok.
The Arroyo family of Milwaukee claims in the suit that the platform didn’t doing enough to warn its younger users about the deadly risk of these acts, resulting in several deaths. One of those users included 9-year-old Arriani Arroyo.
Arriani was later found dead after she took part in a challenge called “Blackout,” in which children and teens choke themselves until they are unconscious.
In an ABC News Exclusive, Arriani’s mother Christal says that her family has lost something they can never get back with the girl’s sudden death as a result of the TikTok.
“We just never thought that there was a darker side to you know, what TikTok allows on its platform,” Arroyo says. “We sat at a table of four chairs. We sit now at three.”
The attourney for the Arroyo family, Matthew Bergman, says at the end of the day, the family’s lawsuit is all about keeping kids safe and preventing another tragic death like Arriani’s.
“The most important thing is just deadly this TikTok blackout challenge is and how predictable it was,” Bergman explained.
A TikTok spokesperson referred ABC News to a statement released last year on the challenge, saying in part the challenge “predates the platform” and that the app remains committed to user safety.
