Ellen Roome has said more than once that if her son had been hit by a car, his death would have at least made some kind of sense.
But after finding 14-year-old Jools dead in his room on a night in April 2022, she is still searching for answers.
“Not one person in Jools’ life thought there was a problem. Not one teacher, not one adult, not one child,” Ms Roome says nearly three years later.
Her crusade is now squarely aimed at social media, and after finding out about the deaths of other British teenagers in similar circumstances, she has joined a group of parents suing TikTok over a dangerous online ‘blackout’ challenge they believe their children took part in.
Ms Roome has tried to access her son’s social media accounts to see the content he was looking at before his death, but says she’s been blocked by the platforms.
“I thought, well, we’re responsible for a minor. Why on earth can’t we see what he’s looking at?”
In the past week, the grief of another family involved in the action against TikTok was made plain before a coroner, who is investigating the death of Maia Walsh, a 13-year-old girl found dead in her Hertford bedroom in October 2022 after seeing concerning content on the platform. Months before, she had commented: “I don’t think I’ll live past 14.”
Harrowing tales like these have sparked a debate over the best ways to protect children from social media harms. The government is already facing criticism that new laws in force ordering tech companies to remove dangerous content are not robust enough, while prime minister Sir Keir Starmer batted away a Conservative push for a blanket phone ban in schools as “wasting time” and “completely unnecessary”.
Labour backbencher Josh MacAlister’s fight to place age restrictions on Facebook, TikTok, and similar platforms was shot down by technology minister Peter Kyle.
But in Australia, parents’ anxiety over their children’s exposure to an unsupervised online world has shaped concrete government action: a ban on teenagers under the age of 16 from accessing social media.
The new laws, which have been given a year to take effect, are a litmus test for a society growing increasingly fearful of the harms faced by children on their smartphones, including violent radicalisation, misogyny, eating disorders, and bullying.
“We know social media is doing social harm,” Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said upon introducing the legislation in November. “We want Australian children to have a childhood, and we want parents to know the government is in their corner.”
But alongside the question of whether the government should bar children from the platforms is the question of whether it actually can, as doubts are raised over the effectiveness of systems designed to restrict the ages of their users.
Age Check Certification Scheme founder Tony Allen believes a ban is absolutely possible.
The UK-based company has been tasked by the Australian government with undertaking a trial of age assurance technology – so far involving 55 participants and 62 different systems – that will underpin the success of the scheme.
Mr Allen says age assurance is split into three categories: age verification, linked to proving someone’s date of birth; age estimation which analyses a person’s biometric data such as their pulse and facial features; and age inference, which assumes someone’s age based on a particular qualifier – like owning a credit card.
“You have to be over 18 to be able to be issued with a credit card… so the reasonableness of the inference is the law requires you to be over 18. You’re therefore likely to be over 18,” he says.
However, he qualifies that whatever the system chosen by the government would involve a never-ending catch-up game to fend off those finding new ways to get around it.
“There’s a lot of work going on on how you detect deep-fakes and injection attacks,” he says, explaining the latter “injects code right behind the camera, right and then tricks the system into thinking it’s looking at you, and it’s not”.
Another pitfall is the tendency of some artificial intelligence to discriminate against people of colour by assuming they’re younger than they actually are, according to Professor Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales’s AI Institute.
But Prof Walsh, who is independently overseeing the trial, is broadly optimistic. He has likened the ban to age restrictions on smoking and drinking in that, while it is unlikely to be flawless, it could be a major driver in forcing cultural change.
“You go behind the bicycle sheds, maybe at school, you will find people smoking cigarettes. Young people will find ways to access alcohol. But we have made it difficult, and we have made it illegal to provide tobacco and alcohol to people underage, and that has changed the conversation around those things,” he says.
Despite the legislation passing in November with opposition support, the approach has been sharply criticised by independent MPs and the Greens, as well as human rights organisations, who have warned it will leave marginalised teenagers, such as those in the LGBTQ+ community without a place to interact.
Contributing to the criticism is Andy Burrows, CEO of Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity set up following the death of British teenager Molly Russell, who took her own life after viewing toxic content online.
“Banning under-16s from social media is a backwards step that would push risks and bad actors onto gaming and messaging services and leave young people at a cliff edge of harm when they turn 16,” Mr Burrows says.
“Children should not be punished for the failures of tech platforms nor the delayed response from successive governments. Our young people’s safety deserves strong, effective solutions to complex problems.”
Unsurprisingly, the social media giants targeted by the law are also opposed to what they claim is a rushed bill that will fail to achieve its goals.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, argued before an Australian parliamentary inquiry into the legislation that the evidence didn’t support a blanket ban and it was unclear what “reasonable steps” companies needed to take to bar children from their platforms to avoid nearly $50 million (£24.4 million) penalties.
“This ambiguity is problematic as understanding a person’s real age on the internet is a complex challenge,” the company’s submission reads.
However, Australia’s eSafety commissioner and former industry insider, Julie Inman-Grant, says she has already spent years calling on tech companies to be more proactive in addressing the harms on their platforms. “It’s not as though they haven’t been given the chance,” she says.
“But age assurance in isolation is not enough. We also need to keep the pressure on the tech industry to ensure their services are safer and our systemic transparency powers and codes and standards are already having an effect in this area.”
The outspoken Ms Inman-Grant, who last month described Elon Musk as an “unelected bureaucrat”, was involved in a high-profile court dispute last year with X over the proliferation of a video on the platform that showed the stabbing of a controversial Sydney preacher.
It later surfaced that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana had viewed the video before carrying out his notorious attack.
Prof Walsh concedes he is concerned about the willingness of American tech giants to comply with the new laws amid the shifting political climate in the US.
“The US-centric policies coming out of North America these days are certainly troubling,” he says, before turning to a precautionary principle enshrined in European law to support Australia’s trajectory.
“We have been running a very interesting, but somewhat concerning, experiment on human society, especially the young people in human society… we are obliged to take a precautionary approach to the potential harmful effects.”
Despite the unknowns, Ellen Roome is supportive of what Australia is trying to pull off – in fact, she says it doesn’t go far enough.
“Just get rid of it. It’s not fit for children. It should be 18, in my opinion,” she says.
Earlier this month the UK’s own online safety legislation came into force. Its primary goal is to make social media companies prevent and remove harmful content such as extremist and child-abuse material from being published on their platforms. The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology says the bill will make the UK “the safest place in the world to be a child online”.
However, during that same time, provisions in a Labour backbencher’s private member’s bill to force social media companies to exclude teenagers under 16 from their algorithms were watered down to a commitment to researching the issue.
But Ms Roome says that in that time children will continue to access harmful material: “How much more research do you need?”
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you
Source: independent.co.uk