Last week, for the first time in this country, it was ruled that social media contributed to a child’s death.
That child was 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017. Her parents have now become internet safety campaigners, taking on the big tech companies whose AI-powered recommendation engines had sucked Molly in.
The inquest, which concluded last Friday, found social media content contributed “more than minimally” to her death. Coroner Andrew Walker concluded that Molly died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.
The words of the coroner about what she was seeing, and how, are worth returning too. He described how Molly was sucked into a vortex of “images, video, clips and text concerning or concerned with self-harm, suicide, or that were otherwise negative or depressing in nature… some of which were selected and provided without Molly requesting them”.
And that is one of the cruxes: without Molly requesting them.
When I used to be a technology correspondent, more than a decade ago, there was a school of thought that such platforms, still very much in their infancy, were only reflecting society back at itself; social media firms must not be blamed, went the argument, for they did not create the societal ills that were then appearing on their sites. Moreover, they were not publishers so were not responsible for content. The latter point is still a very live debate.
But to the former, responsibility was firmly pegged to parents, teachers and elders when it came to children using these platforms. What has shifted is the understanding of how these companies are just that – companies. They monetise and now serve content the user did not seek out themselves in a bid to lengthen the amount of time that user stays on the site. Longer staying power, of course, leads to a greater opportunity to float adverts and other paid-for products in front of the glued eyeballs.
Pinterest’s head of community operations, Judson Hoffman, and head of health and wellbeing at Meta (the parent company which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp), Elizabeth Lagone, both appeared to give evidence during this landmark inquest.
There were some concessions: Mr Hoffman said Pinterest was not safe when Molly used it and that he deeply regrets some of the content she viewed. Some changes have since been made. Ms Lagone, who had security with her, defended posts described by the Russell family as encouraging suicide or self-harm as safe but conceded a number of posts shown to the court would have violated Instagram’s policies.
It is clear what Molly’s tireless father Ian Russell thought of this in his statement. He didn’t mince his words: “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 went on to say: “It’s time to protect our innocent young people instead of allowing [social media] platforms to prioritise their profits by monetising the misery of children.”
Now there are promises from our Government about the long awaited Online Safety Bill finally becoming legislation and better policing of what children see on the internet. We have heard much of this before. But as someone who is fascinated by how we hold power to account, there was something different about this coroner’s ruling, which was described by the head of the NSPCC as a world first, in terms of its implication of a social media company.
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On Tuesday’s edition of Woman’s Hour I welcomed the Russell’s family lawyer, and partner at the law firm Leigh Day, Merry Varney, to the programme. She is a key player in shaping how this story is being told and shared.
Her understated but profound upset was palpable. This incredibly experienced lawyer, who has worked on many inquest cases during her career, is not someone we expect to be distressed. Her account was all the more powerful because of this.
She told me: “It’s the first time that I’ve taken professional assistance. I’m an experienced inquest lawyer. I work a lot with bereaved families with some very difficult material but this was something else.”
And it was. In the final six months of her life Molly saved and “liked” 16,300 images on her Instagram account alone, 2,100 of which related to self-harm, suicide and depression.
Ms Varney was keen to stress that lots of this material, which she was finally granted access to by the social media companies in dribs and drabs after lots of requesting, was directed to or sent to Molly without her searching it out, based on her previous searches. Ms Varney went on this same journey, retracing this “drip feed of daily hopelessness”, as Mr Russell described his daughter’s social media diet, clicking on links from “a vast spreadsheet” provided by Meta.
Working at home on this case, while her own two children were in different parts of the house, Ms Varney quietly confided the following on air: “I took advice about how to protect myself. I’m a very resilient person, but the music from the videos on Instagram, they invade your thoughts.” She went on to say that a consultant psychiatrist, who gave evidence to the court in his role as an expert, described how he couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards.
But here was the crux: “It keeps sucking you deeper, I could feel it happening to myself and I’m a resilient adult. The idea of a 14 year old and children still having access to this material is at times overwhelmingly sad.”
The emotional testimony of the seasoned lawyer, supposedly hardened to such things, was a moment that will live long in the memories of all who heard it and have been sharing the broadcast since.
Accountability can happen anywhere and at any volume. But in this noisy, social media-infused world, sometimes it is the people you don’t expect who quietly, but determinedly, change the atmosphere and shift the dial. Merry Varney, working with Ian Russell and all of Molly’s family, are hoping to do just that. In some way.
It only seems right to give the final word to Molly, from the message she left her family and friends before her death: “Live long, stay strong.”
Emma Barnett presents BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour
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