Bereaved parents of children whose deaths have been linked to social media are crucial voices in the debate over how to ensure that under-18s are not harmed by their experiences online. Two years ago, a coroner’s verdict that the death of Molly Russell was contributed to by “the negative effects of online content”, including algorithmically delivered self-harm material, was a watershed moment. Now Ellen Roome, whose son Jools Sweeney took his own life for unknown reasons in Cheltenham in 2022, has become the latest campaigner for changes to the law in this area.
Her petition calling for parents whose children have died to have a right of access to social media accounts has attracted 120,000 signatures and is likely to be debated by MPs early in the next parliament. While the online safety bill, which received royal assent in October, significantly strengthened a weak and outdated regulatory framework, Ms Roome and the other families in the Bereaved Parents for Online Safety group are right that more needs to be done.
Big efforts have already gone towards ensuring that parents are not left in the dark in situations where young people have taken their own lives, and there is believed to be a connection to online interactions or material. A new power for coroners to access children’s data was agreed when the online safety bill was debated. But rather than being incorporated in that bill, it was added to data protection legislation instead. That bill fell when Rishi Sunak called the general election. The amendment and the work that went into it were lost.
It now seems likely that it will fall to a Labour government to take this broken pledge to parents forward. Given the anguish of their losses, they should not be kept waiting longer than necessary. Campaigners including Ian Russell, who chairs the Molly Russell Foundation – which aims to prevent suicides by young people – and Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, have shown extraordinary courage.
So far, the tech companies have proved uncooperative and resistant to pressure. Michelle Donelan, then culture secretary, said the Molly Russell inquest had demonstrated a “horrific failure of social media platforms to put the welfare of children first”. Experts believe many people would be astonished to learn that, even in cases where a young, vulnerable teenager has tragically died, parents have no automatic right to access their accounts, or to find out what material they have been viewing. Concerns that the tech platforms take reputation management more seriously than children’s safety are added to by decisions such as the one Meta took last month, to rescind a job offer to a cyber-intelligence analyst immediately after he criticised Instagram’s safeguarding failures.
In recent weeks MPs have indicated their willingness to consider a smartphone ban for under-16s. The Molly Rose Foundation and specialists including Lady Kidron believe proactive regulation and enforcement, not prohibition, is the road to take. But there is wide agreement that, as it stands, more web protections are needed. Rules barring under-13s from social media platforms must be made to work by Ofcom. Businesses must be publicly accountable for their design decisions, and compelled to engage with bereaved parents in a humane way. Last year’s online safety act was just the beginning.
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