The father of a girl who committed suicide after viewing electronic contents describes the response of social networks as "unconvincing".

The father of Molly Russell, a girl who committed suicide in 2017 after battling depression at the age of 14, said the social media response to her role in the tragedy had been "unconvincing".

Molly Russell passed away in November 2017. When trying to understand the motives of her step, her relatives discovered that she had been exposed on social networks, especially Instagram and Pinterest, to many contents that lead to suicide, depression and self-harm.

At the end of September 2022, the British judiciary spoke about the role played by the content that the teenager watched in her suicide, after a procedure that revived the debate about the impact of these platforms and their algorithms.

Then the investigator responsible for the judicial process in the case sent a report to companies such as Meta, Pinterest, Twitter and Snapchat, as well as the British government, urging a review of the algorithms used by the sites to present content.

But the reaction from social networks has been "unconvincing and unsurprising", Molly's father, Ian Russell, said in an interview with Britain's PA agency published today.

"The responses vary, but in general they are not convincing, and it seems to me that they indicate the continuation of the usual approach" on the platforms, he added.

Russell pointed out that the suggestions Meta made in its response to the investigator responsible for the file, including sending notices encouraging users to take a break from social networks and think about what they write before sending any comment, are not enough.

"Of course it's a step forward and a catalyst, but is that really enough to make a significant change?" he asked, adding, "These are really secondary measures."

During the investigation to determine the causes of Molly's death, the judiciary considered that the content the girl watched was "not safe" and "should never be available to a child".

Instead of describing her death as a suicide, the investigator in the case considered that the girl "died as a result of an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of visual content on the Internet."

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