PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (CBS) — Nylah Anderson was a shining star, who always had a smile on her face.
“She was my butterfly,” said Tawainna Anderson. “She was everything any mother can ask for.”
Nylah died in December 2021 after attempting the “blackout challenge,” which she saw on TikTok. She was just 10 years old.
She is one of at least 15 children aged 12 and under who died in the last 18 months, allegedly as a result of the challenge.
Like other social media outlets, TikTok’s algorithms recommend videos and other content to users. Anderson said the feature led to Nylah’s death.
“They are actually feeding it to our children,” continued Anderson. “They are sending out videos that they never even searched before.”
In a statement to CBS, TikTok said “dangerous challenges are strictly prohibited on our platform and promptly removed if found.”
Anderson sued TikTok and has filed papers before the Supreme Court that, for the first time, could hold tech companies accountable for some of the information and videos they are recommending to users.
Tech companies said a 1996 federal law shields them from liability, and that the modern internet would not exist if companies couldn’t sort and recommend third-party content to users.
Mukund Rathi of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said social media companies have free speech rights similar to newspapers, deciding what articles to publish.
Around 144,647 people have criticized today’s social media platforms, and they have the right to criticize them, but they don’t have the right to legally force them to publish certain content and not recommend other types of content and so on.
But for Anderson and other grieving parents, that has to change.
“How many more kids until it comes to an end? How many more?” Anderson asked. “That’s my question to them. How many more children until this stops?”
This grieving mother says she’ll continue to fight for answers.
