Ian Russell has felt a weight lift from him. It is nearly five years since his daughter, Molly, took her own life, but a long, painful wait for answers only came to an end less than a week ago.
In a landmark ruling, a coroner concluded that social media brought about the death of his 14-year-old daughter in 2017 by inundating her with images and videos relating to self-harm and suicide.
Molly’s image appeared in news reports around the globe. Yet for Ian, his wife and Molly’s two older sisters, there was simply “relief” that their feelings about the cause of her death had been formally recognised. Their grieving can now enter a different phase.
The 59-year-old is in a reflective mood when he sits down for his first newspaper interview since the dramatic end to the inquest into Molly’s death.
What would Molly have made of her story reaching so far? “Molly was one of the most caring people I’ve ever met,” he tells The Telegraph. “I only knew her for 14 years, but in that time it was apparent she loved helping people and she was also really thoughtful. She would watch a situation, she would sort of analyse it and she would make her own mind up about it. Those two sides of her personality would combine to make her feel really proud that these topics are being talked about now.”
Russell, it is no exaggeration to say, has managed to change the debate around child safety online through years of tireless campaigning that has won him admirers, including the Prince of Wales. On Monday he received a call from Michelle Donelan, the new Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The minister said she “wanted to assure” him that a long-delayed law placing a duty on social-media firms to protect users, particularly children, from harmful content will continue its journey through Parliament before Christmas.
But, after years of platitudes and indecision from authorities, Russell wants to see action, not just words. He points out that four children are lost to suicide every week in the UK.
“I don’t think a secretary of state could say any more than Michelle did,” he says. “But it’s not what she says. It’s what they do. The promise she made to get this through the Commons and into the Lords before Christmas is firstly too slow, but it’s a promise they have to keep.”
The progress of the bill has been stymied by concerns that provisions to clamp down on so-called “legal but harmful” content could see free speech curtailed. Russell is fed up with how this has become “one of the tech lobbyists’ biggest weapons”, something that is distracting from the fact that children are “unprotected when they are online at the moment”.
“I think it was the ‘legal but harmful’ content that Molly saw that was most dangerous,” he says. “I think that’s what sapped her joy and her energy and positivity.”
Many such posts were shown to the inquest into Molly’s death and were chiefly made up of depressing quotes designed to heighten isolation and hopelessness. One that stuck out to Ian was a black-and-white picture of a girl with the words “who would love a suicidal girl?”
The inquest heard that Molly browsed thousands of images glorifying suicide and self-harm in the six months before her death, as she privately battled with depression and anxiety. Her consumption of depression-related material on platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest slowly intensified over time, and became a vicious cycle as the algorithms of the platforms fed her more and more similar content.
Senior executives from both Pinterest and Meta, which owns Instagram, were ordered to fly from the US to give evidence at North London Coroner’s Court. But, despite being told that Molly had “binged” on suicidal and self-harm material on Instagram, Elizabeth Lagone, head of health and wellbeing policy at Meta, insisted the platform was safe for children to use.
“I think any frustration as a father that I had when listening to Elizabeth Lagone was balanced by the fact that any obfuscation that was going on, or non-answering of questions, was a reason to believe that online regulation is essential,” he says.
Regulation, he admits, is not a silver bullet. The algorithms that fed more and more depressive content to Molly could still have a cumulative effect on someone vulnerable even if the content does not cross the threshold into illegality or harm when viewed in isolation. Then there is the sheer pace of technological change which legislation must try to match.
“I don’t think this will ever stop,” Russell says. “The bill needs to keep pace with a tech industry that moves ferociously fast. In order to keep up with the latest platforms, the latest gadgets, the latest corner of the metaverse that might be yet to be invented, the bill needs to be fleet of foot in a way legislation isn’t normally.”
Russell’s main focus is to see new legislation passed as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, it is clear that he feels there should be greater punishments built into the law for tech executives who fail to keep their platforms safe. The Online Safety Bill will instead threaten to fine companies, rather than people, and even then the most punitive sanctions will only be imposed if they fail to cooperate with regulatory requests for information.
Russell, by contrast, wants to see individual responsibility dealt with in a similar way to corporate manslaughter. “When it’s been demonstrated that the practices they use are dangerous and have caused harm in some way, if they haven’t considered that and risk-assessed that properly, and haven’t designed safety into their product, then there should be culpability. Fingers should be pointed and individuals should be fined, just as they are in corporate manslaughter.”
There’s no doubt the inquest took an emotional toll on the Russell family (“it reacquainted us with our grief,” he says). It answered many of the questions about Molly’s death, thanks in no small part to the unprecedented amount of evidence disclosed by Meta and Pinterest about her digital life. But the data, particularly relating to Instagram, was incomplete. Even now, after five years and an unprecedented coronial investigation, Russell still does not know exactly what tipped Molly over the edge on the night she took her own life.
“I think there are questions that will never be answered about Molly’s final hours,” he reflects. “I think that’s almost inevitable. But I would have hoped a global platform would have demonstrated sufficient corporate social responsibility or empathy with a family that has been bereaved to help in that quest. They said the right words, they said fine things, but they never seemed to deliver on those policies.”
In contrast, the Russell family has set up a charity in Molly’s memory, the Molly Rose Foundation, through which they offer help to young people who are contemplating suicide.
Russell admits that the terrible experience of losing Molly has changed him as a father, too. “When you lose such a close loved one, you can’t look at life in the same way,” he says. “You have to find a way to continue and inevitably you find it slightly easier to remember that moments are to be cherished. Hopefully, sometimes, you’re slightly slower to be annoyed. We only get one life. Of course we’ll get annoyed, of course we’ll get upset still, but try to find the branches to cling to that bring happiness.”
The foundation has received hundreds of messages from well-wishers, and Russell says it was “heartening” to receive the support of the Prince of Wales at the conclusion of the inquest. “Online safety for our children and young people needs to be a prerequisite, not an afterthought,” the heir to the throne wrote online. “No parent should ever have to endure what Ian Russell and his family have been through.”
Asked how it had been for the family to grieve in the public eye, Russell says the question has made him stop and think. “I don’t see myself as being in the focus of the public eye. I see myself as someone who has learned very painful lessons and is trying to help other parents make their parenting decisions about the safety of their children. Other members of the family have seen that as well. All of us have found times when we have preferred privacy and all of us have realised the importance of speaking out.
“Strangers have got in touch saying thank you because what you’re doing is helping me have conversations with my kids. Whenever there is an inevitable moment when privacy would be preferred, you remember there is a reason you are doing it.”
