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.
