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

Having a 7 year old kid, I&#x27;m outraged at reading this. There is no single benefit to individuals or society from apps like these, they hijack our brain on the lowest level and makes us junk content feeding zombies.<p>It&#x27;s not just the consumers, but entire generations of &quot;influencers&quot; and &quot;content creators&quot; wasting their lifes on creating something that will give them instant recognition and will be forgotten the moment it is swiped to the next video.<p>Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

I doubt this would go anywhere. You&#x27;re almost admitting to bad parenting. It should be widely known by now social media is harmful to kids. Many people restrict this until late teenage years.<p>Also, before social media there were lots of ways of socializing online. Social media just made it extremely addictive but it&#x27;s just a matter of uninstalling and doing something else.

When I was a kid and did something stupid because one of my friends did, my Mammy used to scornfully say <i>&quot;If &lt;friend&gt; jumped in the fire, would you do it too?&quot;</i><p>At what point did TikTok, YouTube et al become <i>in loco parentis</i> for so many people?

TikTok clearly needs to do better but why are parents letting 8 to 10 year old kids use it alone for hours in a row without supervision? Perhaps they don’t understand the social media landscape or tech? Why is TikTok allowing kids that age have accounts that could even surface choke videos? This is horrendous.

Weird, its almost like this app made by a country that hates the west and plans to invade us in a couple decades wasn’t designed with our wellbeing in mind... who would have guessed

Once you find a hashtag for a particular niche, you will see if glamorized extremely heavily! It can make anything tempting - new job, new trade - and it can affect anyone.<p>Suing TikTok isn&#x27;t the solution for that.

Am I the only one feeling there&#x27;s a certain amount of dishonesty in having these kind of complaints aimed at TikTok as if it was uniquely bad, when Facebook YouTube and Twitter are just as bad?

I’m shocked that an app linked to the Chinese military would be harmful to our society and our children.<p>For real though get your children off social media, nothing good will come of it for them. Tiktok is particularly scary.

More reason Darwin awards should be given to children.

So let&#x27;s ask the obvious question: Did this actually happen, or is this more bullshit propogated by Facebook to sling mud at their enemies. It wouldn&#x27;t be the first time[1]. One of the key characteristics of previous mug-slinging was that there was a panic about the trend, but seemingly no actual evidence of the trend. Has anyone actually seen these black-out trend videos? Presumably if there are hours of these videos we should be able to actually talk to some of the people who filmed these videos? I feel like we see this constantly, where one part of internet has a meme and some other (older, uncool) part of the internet takes it literally and freaks out. Yes dad, we know we&#x27;re not meant to eat the tide pods.<p>[1]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;faceboo...</a>