Parents in Britain will be told the role social media played in their child’s death under new powers handed to an online regulator. Photo / Getty Images
Parents in Britain will be told the role social media played in their child’s death under new powers handed to an online regulator. Photo / Getty Images
Bereaved parents will be told the role social media played in their child’s death under new powers handed to the online regulator Ofcom in the United Kingdom.
In a statement setting out its plans, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said it would issue orders to tech firms to force them to unlock the social media accounts of children where it is suspected it played a part in their death.
Social media platforms that fail to comply will face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue - equivalent to £10 billion ($21b) for a company like Meta, the owner of Facebook.
Directors of the companies could be jailed for up to two years if they fail to comply with or obstruct Ofcom’s requests for access to the data.
The move follows the Telegraph’s duty of care campaign for new legislation to protect children from online harm, and the deaths of children who took their own lives after being bombarded with harmful content such as posts encouraging them to do so.
It took Ian Russell, the father of Molly who took her own life, five years to gain access to his daughter’s social media accounts with the social media companies providing only a “tiny fraction” of the data requested.
Even the limited data that the family obtained through the coroner showed that she received 16,000 “destructive” posts encouraging self-harm, anxiety, and suicide in her final six months.
Molly Russell died in November 2017. Photo / Russell family
The coroner concluded she died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and “the negative effects of online content” which had “more than minimally contributed” to her death.
Ofcom said the information it would seek would include the content seen by the child and how it came to be encountered, including the role of algorithms.
The watchdog will also use its powers to secure data on how the child interacted with the content as well as any posts generated, uploaded or shared by the child.
Ofcom will take action when there is a request from a coroner investigating the death of a child. The Data Bill, currently before Parliament, has been amended to ensure it applies to any death involving a child, whether by suicide or murder.
As well as Russell, other parents who have campaigned for the powers are Lorin LaFave, whose 14-year-old son Breck Bednar was murdered by a boy he met while online gaming, and Stuart Stephens, whose 13-year-old son Olly Stephens was murdered by two boys in 2021, with social media at the heart of the case.
Baroness Kidron, the online campaigner whose amendments instituted the changes in the online safety bill, said it was not that social media firms were deliberately killing children but they could have an “enormous and outsized” impact on children that could lead to their deaths.
“Today is a huge step in the accountability of tech companies for the outcomes of their products.
“Parents who find themselves in the worst possible circumstances should not have to further suffer by never understanding the circumstances surrounding the death of their child.
“Transparency at inquest will drive companies to consider the design of products.
“But while I am delighted at today’s hard-fought news, what I really want is to see is a robust system of safety by design throughout the digital ecosystem.
“And I will continue to fight for that until it is an industry norm.”
An Ofcom spokesman said: “The death of a child has a devastating impact upon families and communities across the UK.
“We understand the important role that investigations undertaken by coroners and procurators play in seeking to establish the underlying causes of individual deaths.
“Working within the legal framework set by the Online Safety Act, we want to ensure that there are appropriate processes in place to support a coroner’s investigation or inquest into the death of a child.”
