British authorities made an announcement about the August death of a 12-year-old boy. Police said that they did not find evidence suggesting that the boy had died from participating in a TikTok challenge called “blackout challenge” or that the TikTok platform had played a role in the boy’s death. Police launched an investigation into TikTok after the boy’s mother, Hollie Dance, requested authorities to investigate TikTok’s influence.

Archie Battersbee, died in August 2022 after a legal battle between his parents and the hospital that lasted for months. His parents, Paul Battersbee and Hollie Dance, were fighting the hospital, which wanted to take the 12-year-old off life support.

In April 2022, Archie’s mother found him suspended and unconscious at their Essex County home. He had a noose around his head made from a dressing gown cord that he was playing with. His mother rushed him to the hospital, and he remained there for five months until his death.

Doctors declared Archie brain dead in June and placed him on life support, but his ventilation was switched off in August, causing his demise. Archie’s parents tried several times to fight the hospital’s decision to take their son off life support in court, but they were unsuccessful.

While speaking to reporters, Dance said that the hospital’s decision to remove Archie from life support was a “choreographed execution.”

After her son’s death, Dance turned to the police and urged them to investigate TikTok because she believed the social media platform had played a role in Archie’s death. Dance said that before Archie’s brain injury, he had jokingly told her he knew how to make himself faint.

She said that her son had never put anything around his neck in the past, so it must have been newly acquired behavior for him to suddenly become interested in doing that when he was 12 years old. She believes that Archie had seen a video of people doing it, and she thinks TikTok is the only place he could have seen that behavior.

During a preliminary hearing for the case on Tuesday, Lincoln Brookes, the chief coroner for Essex County, said that he did not find any indication that the boy had been participating in the so-called blackout challenge.

Authorities accessed Archie’s phone and determined that he did visit TikTok on the day his mother found him. However, they could not determine what kind of videos he viewed that day.

Detective Sarah Weeks said that the videos and photos the police downloaded from his phone did not support the idea that Archie was doing the TikTok challenge.

Authorities will present a full report in December on information from all of his electronics, including his computer, phone, and video game console.

According to the CDC, the “blackout challenge,” or the “choking game,” is a decades-old stunt that started in the 1990s, many years before TikTok’s creation. Despite evidence showing that the game did not originate from TikTok, several parents blamed the platform for its current existence, claiming it is a trending challenge.

In August, a federal judge in the US dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit that claimed that TikTok was responsible for the death of a 10-year-old who took part in the so-called “blackout challenge” in Pennsylvania. Judge Paul Diamond ruled that TikTok is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media and internet platforms from being held liable for content posted by third party users. 

The TikTok platform says it has blocked the search term “blackout challenge,” so that people cannot find it.