It’s the rueful half-smile that breaks my heart. A candid snap of a schoolgirl outside her house, trapped in the parental camera lens. Molly Russell offers the standard “oh-go-on-then-if-you-must” expression that every self-aware teen gives her soppy dad when she’s been ambushed and it’s easier and quicker just to indulge him. A younger child will beam or scowl. That half-smile is an intimation of adulthood, with all the minor compromises and brief accommodations needed to spare other people’s feelings, to get on with her day.
Except Molly will never reach adulthood. Her father will never take another picture of his shining daughter when she goes to prom, passes her driving test or leaves the family home, laden with bin bags and overstuffed dreams for university.
Molly, 14, from Harrow, north west London, was found dead in her bedroom in November 2017 after viewing online content linked to anxiety, depression and self-harm. By online content, I mean she was bombarded with the sort of violent, graphic imagery so disturbing that a child psychiatrist told a coroner’s court he was “unable to sleep well” for weeks after viewing it.
Molly’s father, Ian, addressing the ongoing inquest into her death, said that he had assumed Molly’s low spirits and isolation were the stuff of “normal teenage mood swings”. Maybe it started that way. He spoke of his shock at finding his daughter’s body: “I thought to myself, how does anyone who is 14 know how to get into this state, and how does someone who is 14 know how to end her life so effectively?”
Molly found out how because she was searching for solace in the world she and her entire generation knows best: online. It was to lead her into a downward spiral that ended in horror as her search history elicited suggestions of even more obscene evocations of anguish. How was she to know that artificial intelligence has been programmed to ensure that human pain is ruthlessly exploited, depression monetised and every negative emotion amplified, repackaged, glamourised?
I’ve seen a lot of things online I wish I hadn’t. Bleeding. Burning. Nihilist pronouncements about the pointlessness of living. Why? It’s my job. Not as a journalist but as a mother. I have two daughters. One is 20, the other 13. The 20-year-old says she’s glad not to grow up with the same pressures and malign influences as her younger sister’s generation. But she also knows that confiscating phones will never be the answer. I won’t lie, but that comes as some relief to me because, like every other parent, I have tried and failed a great many times to take back control. The carrot-and-stick approach I used with that first mobile, aged 11, cuts no ice at 12. By 13, it is laughable. Aged 14, it’s not worth even pretending you have any power.
Phones are everything to teenagers; a social connection and life-support system. Take away your son or daughter’s phone by all means, but be warned; it will lead to ostracism, laughter, pity and quite possible bullying from their peers. Your child will never forgive you, regardless of your virtuous motivation. Just because it’s outrageous doesn’t make it any less true.
We grown-ups know the universe doesn’t care about our trials and tribulations. However bleak that may sound, it is at least benign. The metaverse on the other hand, cares. Our children are convinced of it. Nothing and no one can shake that steadfast belief, especially not their tech-tard parents who can barely negotiate the hand-held scanners at Sainsbury’s. At a single touch of their screen, our offspring have instant access to everything they think they need. Yet, in truth, it’s a distorting hall of mirrors.
There are websites to visit and YouTube channels to watch, Pinterest slogans aplenty to match every mood, however dark and dangerous. Exquisitely rendered images of sad girls, beautiful girls, girls just like them cutting, overdosing or contemplating the ultimate liberation. Boys too. Because that is how suicide and self harm are portrayed; filmically, elevated, as an almost poetic release. A way the unheard can have the last word. All of it comes wreathed in mawkish verse and platitudes and evil banalities about the world finally loving you once you have left it and of the tears and flowers at your graveside.
What chance did Molly Russell have? Her grieving family are understandably bereft on so many levels, not least because they had no idea their precious girl was suffering. None. Not because they were neglectful or unobservant. But because Molly – that half-smile again – masked her emotions so effectively. Instead she reached out in the mistaken, harrowingly misplaced, belief that cyberspace could provide answers, support, healing
Dear God. The tragedy of it. Molly’s desperate voice lost in the clamour. Molly’s disabling anxiety met only with silence. Molly’s choked cry echoing into the emptiness. And all the while her father and mother were just downstairs. Nothing can bring back Molly. Nothing can mend the Russell family.
Yes, social media platforms must take responsibility, must protect youngsters and must invest time and money into safeguarding. But here in the real world we need to act too. Molly’s father is right when he says the message, “It’s OK to not be OK” should be communicated more effectively. Support services must be also improved so that children are not afraid to tell their families, so they have a place, a space to talk. So no more helpless, hopeless teenagers will log onto Instagram one last time before they take their own lives.
What chance did Molly Russell have against the relentless force of social media?
At a touch of a screen, our children have instant access to everything they think they need. In truth, it’s a distorting hall of mirrors