Archie Battersbee’s mother has said she remains trapped in a “living hell” as she and three other families sue TikTok over videos they claim are linked to their children’s deaths.
The lawsuit claims that the 12-year-old, alongside Isaac Kenevan, Julian “Jools” Sweeney, 14; and Maia Walsh all died from injuries suffered after taking part in online challenges in 2022 and demands access to their children’s social media accounts.
The Social Media Victims Law Centre (SMVLC), a US-based legal resource for parents of children harmed by social media use, said it had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the video-sharing platform and its parent firm, ByteDance, in the US state of Delaware.
It accuses TikTok of pushing dangerous prank and challenge videos to children to boost engagement time on the platform.
Speaking to The Independent, Hollie Dance said: “I always had this naive view that I’d wrapped my kids in cotton wool and no one could harm them. I didn’t realise that by giving them a phone, I was letting the danger into my own home.”
Archie was found unconscious at the family home in Southend-on-Sea on 7 April 2022 and died four months later in hospital after a lengthy legal battle over the removal of his life support care.
An inquest found that he had died accidentally following a “prank or experiment” that went wrong, and that he “hadn’t intended to harm himself”.
It was discovered that he had been watching TikTok before the incident, but despite both his family and Essex Police’s requests to the company for them to obtain the data from his accounts, it has been refused.
Ms Dance had no knowledge her son had created a TikTok account, and later discovered his usernames through Archie’s school friends. Her son gave no indication he was watching dangerous content aside from one comment in which he said he could make himself unconscious, which she now says was a “huge red flag”.
“As time goes on, the anger starts to kick in and you think ‘what the hell has my child watched and why won’t you give me his data?’” she said.
“How are you supposed to start your grieving when you have unanswered questions? I am in constant fight mode, I have my days when I’m very low but generally I’m turning the pain into fight.
“I had no idea this kind of thing happened and I can prevent any other parent going through what I’m suffering, I will do everything in my power to do so.”
Reflecting on the past two years, she said: “It’s a living hell, every day is heartbreaking. The heart of the home has been ripped out. In bed every night I feel like my little boy should be here and I just think what the hell has happened.”
Jools’s mother, Ellen Roome, 48, a businesswoman from Cheltenham, said the families hope to force a response from tech firms on the issue, and that she “just wants answers” about her son’s death
She added that social media firms had so far refused to give her access to her son’s accounts, saying a court order was required to do so.
Ms Roome said she had been “shocked” to learn that she “wasn’t entitled” to Jools’s data, and said it was “the only piece that we haven’t looked at, to look at why he took his own life”.
She said that it had been “horrendously difficult” to “not understand why” her son had died.
“One day, all of the four children, none of them had mental health issues, it was completely out of the blue, they all decided to take their life – more importantly, I don’t think they intended to take their life,” she said.
“This is our opportunity to get answers. Its incredibly hard and emotional to lose a child, and this has given us a possibility of understanding exactly what happened that night.”
Ms Roome has also been campaigning for “Jools’ Law” to give parents the right to access their children’s online activity after they die – and the issue was debated in Parliament last month after an online petition for the campaign gained more than 126,000 signatures.
“Without social media companies releasing it, I still don’t know what he was looking at, was there somebody weird messaging him? I just don’t know,” she told PA.
“So my fight has just been, ‘all we want is our children’s data’.”
She added: “I know that I was a loving mum to my son, and I know my son loved me, so I don’t really care what everybody else says. I want to know the truth.
“We shouldn’t have had to go this far to get our children’s data. Why didn’t they just say, ‘here’s the data, I hope you get some closure?’, or some sort of answer from it.
“They could have handed this over and said, ‘let me help you’ – and nobody has ever tried to help us.”
Matthew P Bergman, founding lawyer of the SMVCL, and who represents the families, said: “TikTok’s algorithm purposely targeted these children with dangerous content to increase their engagement time on the platform and drive revenue.
“It was a clear and deliberate business decision by TikTok that cost these four children their lives.”
Asked how she responded after being told the lawsuit had been filed, Ms Roome said: “Oh my God, we’ve got a chance to get answers.
“There’s an overwhelming excitement of a possible chance of answers, but there’s also that underlying grief of ‘we’re doing this because our children are dead’.
“I’m not stopping. There’s nothing in this world which would stop me. I want answers. This isn’t about money or anything like that. I want the answers.”
TikTok has been approached for comment.
