Lalani returned home from a road trip with her stepmother Rashika Watson on July 15, 2021. Lalani was instructed to clean her room while Rashika took a short nap; once they were finished, they may go swimming.
An hour later, Rashika awoke from her nap and checked on Lalani. When she arrived, she discovered Lalani hanging from her bed with a rope around her neck. When Rashika touched her, she was still warm. When authorities came, they determined that she had died from asphyxiation.
Both females participated in the “blackout challenge,” a TikTok challenge, according to SMVLC. This fashion encourages people to suffocate themselves until they pass out using belts, purse strings, and other similar materials.
TikTok is “an addictive product that is not safe for consumers,” in the lawsuit the families have filed.
TikTok has to be held accountable for exposing these two young girls to harmful content, according to Matthew P. Bergman, the founding counsel of SMVLC. TikTok has spent billions of dollars designing products that deliberately promote hazardous content that it knows is hazardous and may cause its users’ deaths.
Children aged 13 and older are the target demographic for the TikTok app. This is because the app features an age gate that users must pass to access; for those who are younger, the software behaves differently.
Knowing these families lost their little daughters due to social media trends is highly tragic.
