Jools Sweeney, a schoolboy from Gloucestershire, died in April 2022 after a suspected “blackout challenge” on TikTok.
His mother, Ellen Roome, and father, Matt Sweeney, have long argued that social media played a role in his death, pointing to the popularity of the challenge online at the time.
High Court Orders Fresh Inquest Over Social Media Evidence
Lord Justice Warby and Mrs Justice Heather Williams ordered a new hearing into the schoolboy’s death.
They said it was “now clear there are various potential lines of inquiry” that had not been considered in the initial 2022 inquiry.
That initial hearing lasted only 23 minutes and heard no oral evidence.
It also did not examine social media evidence, which was unavailable at that time.
She later commissioned a private forensic analysis of the boy’s phone.
That analysis uncovered evidence not available to the original investigation.
Her barrister, Harry Lambert, said evidence from the teen’s TikTok data was “highly probative of overuse or addiction”.
The decision is believed to be the first of its kind in England and Wales, where one of the main grounds for overturning the previous hearing was the lack of digital evidence.
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Anthony Jones, representing the platform, said the company did not oppose her proposal.
He added that the company “could certainly see the force” for a new inquiry.
Roome, weeping in court as the judges read out their ruling, said: “For more than four years, we have fought every single day for the truth about what happened to our beautiful son Jools.”
“Today, the legal system has finally recognised that there are questions which deserve to be answered.”
This case mirrors a growing pattern across the Atlantic.
Families there have pushed for greater scrutiny of platform content after teen deaths linked to online challenges.
In the U.S., similar lawsuits have faced hurdles over Section 230 protections.
But the high court’s decision here suggests courts are increasingly willing to treat missing digital evidence as a serious gap in coronial proceedings.
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She has also successfully campaigned for “Jools’s law”.
That law now requires tech companies to automatically preserve a child’s online and social media data within five days of their death.
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The measure was written into the Crime and Policing Act on April 29, 2026.
“This journey has broken us at times,” she said.
“It has taken an enormous emotional toll on our family, but we could never stop.
We fought not only for Jools.
We fought for every family who deserves to know the truth about how their child died.”
Gary Miller, a partner at Mishcon de Reya who instructed Lambert, spoke about the case.
He said the case had exposed how much change is needed.
“Social media is integrated into the lives of young people, and the current investigative processes are not fit for purpose in this new world.”
Roome is separately suing the app and its parent company, ByteDance, in Delaware, U.S.
She is joined by four other bereaved British parents.
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