14-year old Molly Russel seemed an unlikely candidate for suicide according to her Father Ian, Shortly before ending her life, she’d been celebrating a joint birthday party for her elder sisters. It was only after her death that Ian reviewed her social media accounts on Instagram and Pinterest and found images of self-harm. A “Sunday Times” investigation found pictures of blood-spattered arms, a number of self-inflicted injuries and even an image of a naked girl sitting in a sink of blood emblazoned with the words, “she found relief in a knife”. Many of the rather indecent images contained hashtags such as #killmeplease.
The general consensus is that such material should;t be seen by children but implementing this is more problematic. The Times has reported that UK health secretary Matt Hancock wrote to tech companies such as Instagram’s owner Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Snapchat and Pinterest to tell them to remove disturbing material or face legislation.
Molly’s father would like to take this a step further by introducing an independent regulator to ensure indecent or illegal content can be removed from social media sites, who can be held accountable if they refuse. There may be some appetite for this as the Coroner leading the Inquest has indicated that he may order social media companies like Facebook to hand over Molly’s data: to date, they’ve refused to do so citing privacy concerns.
This was also an issue for Ian when he tried to unlock Molly’s iPhone and iPad-as the passcode is stored on the device, Apply employees were unable to help. The threat of being charged with perverting the course of justice is likely to push companies further in a direction where they take less responsibility for the content they create. A spokesperson for Instagram was quick to point out last week that images promoting self-harm or suicide are already forbidden by the platform. Clearly, the way forward is to support independent regulation of social media as the alternative of installing a government-mandated backdoor into devices and privacy policies would place a stranglehold on civil liberties.
As a parent, however, the only surefire way to keep your children safe from paedophiles, abuse and self-harm is to place a family PC in a communal area and make sure you’re there when your loved ones are using it. That way if your child sees something which troubles them, they can at least ask you about it.
Nathan Jordan
Jersey, Channel Islands
Citizen J 