Online safety plan lacks ambition, Molly and Brianna’s parents claim
OFCOM’S plans to protect children from online harms lack ambition, the parents of Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have said.
Ian Russell, chairman of the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity set up in Molly’s memory, said Ofcom needed to go further to give children online. Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, who was murdered last year aged 16, said it was a “pivotal point” for social media firms to step up and “make sure that change happens”. And in a letter to Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, Bereaved Families for Online Safety, a group of parents whose children’s deaths were linked to social media, urged them to ban tech firms if they failed to design services in a “safe and fundamentally responsible way”.
Their comments yesterday came after the regulator Ofcom published new draft codes that will require social media firms to introduce “highly effective” age checks including the use of photo IDS so they can identify children on their sites. Firms will also have to configure algorithms to filter out the most harmful content – such as selfharm, suicide and eating disorders – from children’s social media feeds.
Mr Russell, whose daughter Molly, 13, took her life after being bombarded with self harm and suicide content, said Ofcom needed to be more ambitious.
“The regulator has proposed some important and welcome measures, but its overall set of proposals need to be more ambitious to prevent children encountering harmful content that cost Molly’s life,” he said.
“It’s been over six years since Molly’s death, but the reality is that very little has yet changed. In some respects, the risks for teens have actually got worse.”
The campaigning parents believe Ofcom needs to be more precise about age checks, and are concerned about what they see as a fault in the legislation which means it is difficult to fully block children’s access to legal but harmful content such as dangerous stunts.
‘It’s been six years since Molly’s death... in some respects, the risks for teens have actually got worse’