Molly Russell Instagram, Pinterest suicide
Occurred: November 2017
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A coroner concluded (pdf) that the death of 14 year-old Molly Russell had been contributed to by Instagram and Pinterest in 'more than a meaningful way'. 'She died', the coroner ruled, 'from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.'
The Guardian found that, in the lead up to her death, Russell had viewed and interacted with over 2,000 Instagram posts related to suicide, self-harm, or depression, and hundreds of similar images on Pinterest.
Instagram owner Meta and Pinterest acknowledged unsafe content had been on their platforms and apologised. The inquest had been delayed multiple times, in part due to content redaction requests from Meta.
System
Instagram website, Wikipedia profile
Instagram (2022). Updates to the Sensitive Content Control
Pinterest website, Wikipedia profile
Legal, regulatory
North London Coroner’s Service (2022). REGULATION 28 REPORT TO PREVENT FUTURE DEATHS (pdf)
UK Childrens' Commissioner (2019). Online platforms must do more to tackle social media content which is harmful to children
Research, advocacy
NSPCC (2022). Molly Russell inquest findings
Duffy B.E., Meisner C. (2022). Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators’ experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility
Minsun L., Lee H-H. (2021). Social media photo activity, internalization, appearance comparison, and body satisfaction: The moderating role of photo-editing behavior
Picardo J., McKenzie S.K., Collings S, Jenkin G. (2020). Suicide and self-harm content on Instagram: A systematic scoping review
Royal Society for Public Health (2017). Status of Mind
News, commentary, analysis
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-a-british-teens-death-changed-social-media
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/business/instagram-suicide-ruling-britain.html
https://gizmodo.com/molly-russell-instagram-pinterest-coroner-death-1849601679
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/heated-words-instagram-chief-says-163117507.html
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: June 2023