A coroner in the UK said that a 14-year-old girl committed suicide after experiencing the ‘bad impacts of online information’. Social media has once again come under scrutiny as a result of the case, with concerns about its effect on young people being highlighted.
According to Andrew Walker at North London Coroner’s Court, Molly Russell was ‘exposed to material that may have influenced her negatively and, in addition, what had initially started as a depression had become a more significant mental disorder’. Walker stated that it would not be ‘safe’ to assume that the adolescent committed suicide and that instead the death was caused by a ‘act of self-harm while suffering depression’. She viewed some ‘very graphic’ content.
In the six months leading up to her death, Russell saved, liked, or shared 16,300 Instagram posts, 2,100 of which were about despair, self-harm, or suicide, the inquest heard. Russell, a resident of northwest London’s Harrow, passed away in November 2017. Her family launched a campaign to raise awareness of social media risks. In a statement, Molly’s father Ian stated, ‘Molly was a thoughtful, sweet-natured, caring, inquisitive, selfless, gorgeous individual — yet a few words cannot adequately encompass our darling baby’.
‘We have heard a senior Meta (Instagram parent company) executive describe this deadly stream of content the platform’s algorithms pushed to Molly as ‘safe’ and not contravening the platform’s policies. If this demented trail of life-sucking content was safe, my daughter Molly would probably still be alive and instead of being a bereaved family of four, there would be five of us looking forward to a life full of purpose and promise that lay ahead for our adorable Molly’.
He encouraged change and said that the world’s largest social media platform needed to do rid of its destructive corporate culture. Oliver Sanders, the family’s attorney, questioned Meta’s head of health and wellbeing Elizabeth Lagone during a week-long hearing as to why the platform permitted kids to access it while also ‘allowing others to put potentially hazardous stuff on it’.
‘In America, you are just a business—not a parent. You don’t have permission to act in that manner. Children opening these accounts lack the mental competence to provide their permission’, he said. After seeing the video Russell had seen, Lagone apologised. The verdict ‘must be a turning point,’ according to children’s charity NSPCC, which also emphasised that any delay in a government law addressing online safety ‘would be incomprehensible to parents’.
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