Ian Russell describes his life as being split into two parts: before and after 20 November 2017, the day his youngest daughter, Molly, took her own life as a result of depression and negative social media content. \u201cOur life before Molly\u2019s death was very ordinary. Unremarkable,\u201d he says. He was a television producer and director, married with three daughters. \u201cWe lived in an ordinary London suburb, in an ordinary semi-detached house, the children went to ordinary schools.\u201d The weekend before Molly\u2019s death, they had a celebration for all three girls\u2019 birthdays, which are in November. One was turning 21, another 18 and Molly was soon to be 15. \u201cAnd I remember being in the kitchen of a house full of friends and family and thinking, \u2018This is so good. I\u2019ve never been so happy,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThat was on a Saturday night and the following Tuesday morning, everything was different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second part of Russell\u2019s life has been not only grief and trauma, but also a commitment to discovering and exposing the truth about the online content that contributed to Molly\u2019s death, and campaigning to prevent others falling prey to the same harms. Both elements lasted far longer than he anticipated. It took nearly five years to get enough information out of social media companies for an inquest to conclude<\/a> that Molly died \u201cfrom an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content\u201d. As for the campaigning, the Molly Rose Foundation<\/a> provides support, conducts research and raises awareness of online harms, and Russell has been an omnipresent spokesperson on these issues.<\/p>\n He has been busier than ever lately. We meet at a London hotel, a few hours before the House of Lords vote on an amendment to the children\u2019s wellbeing and schools bill that would ban access to social media for under-16s. The amendment was expected to pass \u2013 and it did, by 261 votes to 150. Keir Starmer\u2019s government is in favour of a consultation, and a pause to see how Australia\u2019s trailblazing<\/a> unfolds. But a UK ban has had widespread support, from Conservatives, including Kemi Badenoch<\/a>, as well as more than 60 Labour MPs<\/a>, bereaved relatives<\/a> of children whose deaths were social media-related, celebrities, campaign groups and, it seems, the public \u2013 a YouGov poll in December<\/a> found that 74% of British adults were in favour.<\/p>\n Russell, however, is not in favour of such a ban. Last Sunday he co-signed a joint statement, alongside the NSPCC, Full Fact, the 5 Rights Foundation and others, arguing that<\/a> \u201cblanket bans on social media would fail to deliver the improvement in children\u2019s safety and wellbeing that they so urgently need\u201d.<\/p>\n Ian Russell, photographed at the Zetter Clerkenwell. Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n An inconvenient split seems to have opened up, at a time when online harms and social media companies are finally in the spotlight. But if anyone has spent time weighing up this issue, it\u2019s Russell, and he doesn\u2019t seem like someone looking for controversy. \u201cAs a person, I need to gather information and process it before I can come to a conclusion,\u201d he says. \u201cI often find myself at meetings hearing what\u2019s being said, and it can be difficult to contribute because I haven\u2019t formed my opinions yet.\u201d But on this issue he\u2019s firm in his conviction, even if others find it difficult to understand. \u201cWe\u2019re in danger of trying to move too fast and trying to find quick-fix solutions,\u201d he says. \u201cIf there were quick-fix solutions, honestly, we would have found them.\u201d<\/p>\n The core arguments laid out by Russell and other opponents of a ban will be familiar to followers of this debate: that children will seek more dangerous alternatives; that they will find ways to circumvent age limits; that they will face a \u201ccliff edge\u201d when they turn 16 and are thrown into the \u201chigh-risk\u201d world of social media; that some groups, such as LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse children, will be deprived of valuable online sources of support and connection.<\/p>\n But Russell\u2019s position also hinges on the Online Safety Act<\/a>, which is just starting to do what it\u2019s supposed to, he argues. The legislation, passed in 2023, obliges online platforms to conduct robust age verification and prevent harmful content reaching children. It also gives the government and Ofcom, the independent media regulator, powers to fine or even take down platforms not playing by the rules. Molly\u2019s death, and Russell\u2019s campaigning, helped push the act through.<\/p>\n Russell admits progress has been slow. \u201cIt took five years of parliamentary debate to put the Online Safety Act on the books. It\u2019s taken Ofcom more than two years, but they are now implementing and enforcing that act. It\u2019s too long, but we have literally just arrived at a place, after all that time, when the platforms, in order to operate in the UK, if their services are likely to be used by children, have to take steps to ensure the safety of those children.\u201d<\/p>\n The recent furore over Elon Musk\u2019s X and Grok<\/a> is a good illustration, he says. The integration of Grok AI tools that could manipulate images of women, and even children, to remove their clothing, into X \u2013 effectively making a tool for creating deepfake child sexual abuse images widely available \u2013 horrified pretty much everyone, Russell included. \u201cI don\u2019t understand how X and Elon Musk can even begin to think that that was acceptable,\u201d he says. \u201cHideous, wrong, disgraceful. But what was the reaction in the UK to that?\u201d After the issue became known, Ofcom opened a formal investigation into X<\/a>, acting under the powers of the Online Safety Act. Starmer and technology secretary Liz Kendall said they would support Ofcom if it chose to fine or block \u200bX. Within days, Musk made a U-turn<\/a> and removed the software from his platform.<\/p>\n Molly Russell at 11. Photograph: The Russell family<\/p>\n The Online Safety Act did what a social media ban couldn\u2019t, Russell argues. \u201cIf a platform is behaving in an appalling, unsatisfactory, abysmally unsafe manner, it shouldn\u2019t be in this country \u2026 A ban [for under-16s] removes the impetus to do that. In fact, what it\u2019s likely to do is have a really chilling effect on the Online Safety Act.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not arguing that the legislation is perfect \u2013 X was still allowing some users<\/a> to post sexualised images generated by Grok after Musk\u2019s U-turn, it took weeks for Ofcom to act, and X escaped censure for what many still consider an egregious offence \u2013 \u201cbut it\u2019s there to be built on. You don\u2019t get anything right the first time \u2026 You also have to accept that the development of tech moves so fast, you\u2019re going to constantly have to be amending it and looking at it and updating it. We have to be thinking ahead of the tech crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n A common argument in favour of a social media ban for under-16s is the alcohol analogy. We don\u2019t sanction selling alcohol to minors because it is potentially harmful. Sure, some kids might find a way around it, like getting a fake driving licence, but as a society we\u2019ve put down a marker that you have to be a certain age to drink. Shouldn\u2019t it be the same with social media?<\/p>\n Russell is in favour of regulation, but says it should be sensible and proportionate. He counters with another offline analogy: cars and road traffic. \u201cThere will be casualties. It\u2019s sad and tragic when it happens, and we accept that. We don\u2019t say: children under 16 shouldn\u2019t ride in cars to protect them. We say children under 12 should always be in a car seat. We say that everyone in a car, however old, should wear a seatbelt. The industry is compelled to comply with safety measures \u2026 We don\u2019t blanket ban 16-year-olds from road travel.\u201d<\/p>\n We do ban them from driving though, I point out. \u201cI\u2019m not saying we should let 16-year-olds on platforms that encourage irresponsible behaviour. I\u2019m saying we should let 16-year-olds on platforms that are safe for 16-year-olds.\u201d<\/p>\n Age classification should be on a platform-by-platform basis, in Russell\u2019s view: \u201cIf there was a platform that was really safe, really good, and connected people and did all the good things that social media could do, we could say 13 is fine.\u201d Some other platforms might be rated 16 or 18, say. \u201cIf you were to differentiate like that, you would then drive platforms who wanted to attract younger people [to] start inventing safer things.\u201d<\/p>\n Some might say social media companies have had every chance to do this already. Instead, despite having been repeatedly confronted with evidence of the harms they have caused, they have routinely denied and evaded accountability, and even scaled down their internal checks and balances. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, apologised to parents of social media victims at a Senate hearing in January 2024, but a year later, following Donald Trump\u2019s re-election, he announced that Instagram, Facebook and Threads would be getting rid of factcheckers<\/a>, even if, he admitted, \u201cit means we\u2019re gonna catch less bad stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n Ian Russell outside Barnet coroner\u2019s court after the inquest into Molly\u2019s death, September 2022. Photograph: Joshua Bratt\/PA<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t trust the platforms at all,\u201d Russell agrees. \u201cYou certainly can\u2019t judge a social media platform by what it says; you can only judge by what it does.\u201d And again, he argues, the Online Safety Act is a better weapon to keep them in line. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got an effective regulator and strong regulation, then you could go, \u2018You\u2019re not doing what you\u2019re telling us you\u2019re doing. You\u2019re not living up to your risk assessment. You\u2019ve got three months to fix it, or you\u2019re out.\u2019 That\u2019s the sort of thing that will make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Russell has good reason not to trust the platforms, especially Meta<\/a>. After Molly\u2019s death, Russell and his family were shocked and confused, until they began to look into her online activity. \u201cWe discovered, in a really painful way, because we could see it in her social media accounts, the content that had been fed to her by the platforms.\u201d The feedback loop of the algorithm had served her more and more disturbing content: graphic images and videos relating to suicide, self-harm and depression, often set to music, flashing slogans like \u201cFat. Ugly. Worthless. Suicidal.\u201d Even a consultant psychiatrist at the inquest into Molly\u2019s death said that they\u2019d had trouble sleeping after viewing it. \u201cThat discovery of this awful, nihilistic world in which she was drip-fed largely black-and-white, depressive content, that led her to the place where she thought that the only way forward was to end her life, was horrifying,\u201d Russell says.<\/p>\n Initially, they reported their findings to Instagram<\/a>, he recalls. \u201cWe thought that they\u2019d say, \u2018Thank you for reporting this horrible content. We\u2019ll take it down.\u2019\u201d Instead they received replies along the lines of \u201cthis doesn\u2019t infringe our community guidelines\u201d.<\/p>\n Getting a complete picture of Molly\u2019s online activity was a long, difficult, painful process. Cooperation from the tech companies was minimal, but Andrew Walker, the senior coroner at the inquest, was tenacious. Pinterest<\/a>, which had algorithmically sent harmful content to Molly, complied. Twitter (now X) allowed Russell to download the data from Molly\u2019s account, which wasn\u2019t that helpful without the background context. Meta initially supplied tens of thousands of pages of data, which was all but unsearchable. After more demands, delays and ultimatums, eventually, five years after Molly\u2019s death, Meta found an additional 50 lever-arch files of evidence. \u201cWithin that evidence was some of the most harmful content that Molly had seen, which completed the picture.\u201d In her final six months, Molly had been exposed to 2,100 pieces of harmful content on Instagram alone. There were only 12 days in that period when she doesn\u2019t seem to have interacted with harmful content on the platform.<\/p>\n