Six families have sued TikTok who hosted the 'Blackout Challenge on their platform. One family from the USA and five others from the UK are leading the legal action. The mother of one UK teenager has led a campaign to force social media platforms to release data of a child's social media activity in the event of a child’s death but the access to that data has been denied by the companies citing privacy laws that prevent them releasing the information. They also have stated that the data is deleted after a short period and is no longer available to clarify just what the children we actually watching.
Ellen Roome has led the campaign in the UK for 'Joules Law' , named after he son, which would require social media companies to retain data for set period which can be accessed by parents and law enforcement.
This is one more reason why monitoring what your child is accessing with their agreement is so important. Adults can make judgements about such challenges which might elude young people and by building a digital trust relationship through monitoring could have saved some of these families from such awful consequences.
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