The head of online regulator Ofcom said there was no trust that the platforms could ‘clean up their own services’. Photograph: Imago/Alamy View image in fullscreen The head of online regulator Ofcom said there was no trust that the platforms could ‘clean up their own services’. Photograph: Imago/Alamy Internet safety UK watchdogs urged to tackle suicide social media content after death of girl, 14 Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing ‘high-risk’ material on the video-sharing platform TikTok
Prefer the Guardian on Google A 14-year-old schoolgirl’s death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on “toxic” social media feeds.
Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok “may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life”.
An inquest heard the teenager’s death had “a devastating effect on those close to her” and that her devices revealed she had “viewed a number of videos and images related to suicide on TikTok in the week preceding her death”.
“It seems that Adriana’s access to this material may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life that evening,” the Norfolk area coroner, Johanna Thompson, said.
Asked to respond, TikTok said its “deepest sympathies are with the family at this incredibly difficult time”. It said it enforces “strict rules against any content that promotes self-harm” and uses advanced technologies to proactively detect and remove content that violates its community guidelines. It is understood it had not yet investigated what happened with Retyte’s account.
The case came as Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of the regulator Ofcom , told MPs: “We do not see a safety culture from these large social media companies … they are very slow to acknowledge that there are risks of criminal action, child grooming and also some of these issues of the way the algorithms feed suicide and self-harm material.” She added that “trust they can clean up their own services is simply not there”.
The coroner added there was “no way of knowing” why Retyte acted as she did, but said it was clear that she may have been influenced by “the negative effects of her having viewed online content”. She is working on a prevention of future deaths report that will be circulated to bodies including Ofcom, which in June launched a separate investigation into whether TikTok was failing to comply with its legal obligations to protect children from harmful content.
Retyte’s death came nine years after another 14-year-old, Molly Russell, took her own life after being served suicide and self-harm content on social media, including Instagram. A charity set up in her name, which campaigns for safer social media, called Retyte’s death “devastating”. The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) is now calling on Ofcom to launch an investigation into TikTok’s algorithm, accusing the regulator of seeming to be “unwilling or unable to act on this deadly harm”.
Andy Burrows, the chief executive of the MRF, said: “The three-quarters of teens who are still seeing high-risk suicide, self-harm and depression content saw it on TikTok. The case for action is clear, it just needs the will to take on big tech. Ofcom must now open an investigation into TikTok’s algorithm that is driving h…