Molly Russell would be fighting to make online world safe, bereaved father says

Molly Russell’s father said his daughter would fight to make the online world safe if she were still alive, while he and other bereaved parents called for urgent action from the Government to tackle the harms of social media.

Campaigners who linked child deaths to social media were told at a meeting with the Prime Minister on Tuesday that measures to protect young people should be announced within “weeks, not months”.

This comes ahead of the deadline for the Government’s consultation on what action it should take, titled Thriving in an Online World, which closed just before midnight.

More than 80,000 responses were submitted, including from more than 40,000 parents and 13,000 teenagers, and a range of measures are being considered, from banning social media use by under-16s to limiting scrolling or introducing an overnight curfew for children.

Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly committed suicide after watching harmful content online in 2017, described it as “unacceptable” that young people today are exposed to the same harmful content as his daughter.

Mr Russell, who remembered Molly as a “campaigner” who stood up for what he believed was right, told the Press Association: “Molly was a very ordinary teenager who just happened to click on a few wrong things on the internet and then the algorithms, which were brand new to the world at the time, came into play and fed her even more stuff.

“He should still be here right now, and if he were he would be fighting to make the digital world as safe as possible for others to use.”

He said introducing a blanket ban would be an “admission of failure” by the Government, explaining that children will inevitably find their own way around it and that effectively banning social media for under-16s would deter them from speaking up when something goes wrong. “I’ve been saying this for years, ever since Molly died, because of course I wish Molly had somehow found the courage to do it with us because her parents could have said: ‘Dad, I think I’ve got a problem, I’m thinking of ending my life,'” Mr Russell told PA.

“I can’t blame him for not having that conversation… It’s almost impossible for a 14-year-old to tell his parents that this is where they find themselves, and anything that makes that difficult is literally potentially life-threatening.”

Instead of a ban, Mr Russell is calling on the Government to end interaction-based algorithms, endless scrolling and disappearing messages aimed at teenagers, as well as introduce measures to prevent strangers from contacting a child online.

He said creating secure platforms should be a “cost” for tech firms doing business in the UK.

“We would not allow a car on our roads in the UK that did not exceed our safety standards,” he told PA.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t learn from our offline world and apply similar rules and regulations to the online world.”

Ellen Roome, who believes her son Jools Sweeney died at the age of 14 after looking at harmful content online, said outside Number 10 on Tuesday afternoon: “I was quite insistent about why they didn’t do something now and this whole consultation process was because various charities said they should take their views into account.

“More and more children are dying while we wait.

“They need to act; it looks like it will take weeks, not months.”

Ruth Moss, whose 13-year-old daughter Sophie Parkinson died in 2014, told PA she had been campaigning for almost 12 years.

“I hope our voices have been heard, I think they have, it was a listening exercise and the Prime Minister listened to what we said and what we wanted,” he said.

The Education Committee called on the Government to introduce a legal ban on social media use by children under 16 in a report published last week.

Committee chair Helen Hayes said: “Children and young people growing up today face a host of serious harms, from bullying and misogyny to abuse and sexual exploitation, every time they log on to social media.”

A survey conducted in March by Censuswide for the children’s charity Barnardo’s on young people aged 13 to 20 on their experiences of misogyny online found that a quarter of girls had been called derogatory names online.

A quarter of the 4,000 young people surveyed said they had seen a nude photo that was first sent privately and then shared, while 15% of young people aged 13-15 were asked to share a nude photo of themselves.

One in five boys said their friends wouldn’t support them if they made sexist comments, and 57% said people would find them “boring” if they didn’t join in on the “jokes” in the group.

Earlier on Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer said he had tasked the Government with creating a “game-changing” policy to keep children safe online and promised action would be taken “very quickly”.

Visiting a nursery in East Sussex, Sir Keir said: “We will be determined because it is absolutely clear to me that we need to act to protect children and we can act quickly.”