14-year-old British girl dies due to negative effects of online content
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London: Molly Russell, a 14-year-old British girl, died due to self-harm because she was suffering from the "negative effects of online content".
The investigation found that Molly had saved, shared, and liked 16,300 Instagram posts in the last six months of her life. 2,100 of them were about depression, self-harm, and suicide. She died in November 2017 and her family has been running a campaign to highlight the dangers of social media.
Andrew Walker ruled at North London Coroner's Court that the girl was exposed to online material that "may have influenced her in a negative way" which caused what started as depression to become a "more serious depressive illness," reported AFP.
The coroner added that it will not be safe to conclude it was suicide and said she "died from an act of self-harm while suffering depression". The content she viewed was "particularly graphic" and "normalised her condition".
Her father said in a statement that they heard a senior Meta executive describing the algorithm to be a "deadly stream of content". Platform policies did not intervene when the algorithm pushed dangerous content as "safe". The family believes that the "demented trail of life-sucking content" was not safe and took Molly's life. "It's time the toxic corporate culture at the heart of the world's biggest social media platform changed," said her father.
During the hearing, lawyer Oliver Sanders representing Molly's family asked the Meta executive why Instagram allowed children to use it when harmful content was on it. He said: "You are not a parent, you are just a business in America. You have no right to do that. The children who are opening these accounts don't have the capacity to consent to this".
Elizabeth Lagone, the head of health and wellbeing at Meta, agreed that the content viewed by Molly violated the platform's policies. After the hearing, Meta issued a statement saying the company will continue to work with the world's leading independent experts to help ensure that the changes we make offer the best possible protection and support for teens.