Brianna Ghey’s mom requires social media ban for kids below 16 | EUROtoday

The mom of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey known as for a ban on social media for kids below 16, calling it an “absolute cesspit”.

Esther Ghey was talking on the screening of a brand new ITV documentary, Brianna: A Mother’s Storywhich explores the demise of Brianna, 16, who was murdered by classmate Scarlett Jenkinson and her good friend Eddie Ratcliffe.

Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, who had been each 15 on the time of the homicide, lured Brianna to a park in Cheshire the place she was stabbed 28 instances with a looking knife, on February 11 2023.

On her campaigning work on on-line security and trolling, Ms Ghey stated: “Even if, say, if I do an interview, and I’ll try not to look at comments, but I can never help myself, and I’ll look at the comments, and you’ll see people saying about my child, trying to tell me what gender my child was, and also really, really horrific comments too.

“And it’s mentioned in the documentary as well, that when you report things, the support isn’t there.”

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Speaking on the screening in west London, Ms Ghey stated one of many causes she had chosen to participate within the documentary was to “get answers” from social media corporations about security.

She stated: “At this point, I really do not believe that any social media company will put lives before profit.”

Ms Ghey has beforehand met prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, and his predecessor Rishi Sunak, to debate the problem, and has criticised the Online Safety Act, saying it doesn’t go far sufficient.

She has campaigned for an age restrict on smartphone use, stricter controls on entry to social media apps, more durable motion on knife crime and for mindfulness to be taught in faculties.

She added: “I’ve reported so many comments, and I always get the response that they haven’t done anything wrong, that it’s not something that they can take down, and our children have access to those comments.

“No matter how much love and compassion you pump into your child when you’re bringing them up, and how much empathy you can teach them as well, they will then go online and they’ll see the way that other people are speaking about other people, and they might think that that’s right.

“And that’s without even going into the amount of harm that’s online, like the dangerous challenges where young people are losing their lives due to these sick challenges that people are uploading, misogyny, hate, misinformation, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.”

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The 75-minute movie celebrates Brianna’s life and options interviews with three of her pals, who describe the schoolgirl as variety, chatty and humorous. It additionally explores her demise and points round on-line security.

Brianna, who had 1000’s of followers on TikTok, struggled along with her psychological well being, which was worsened by accessing consuming dysfunction and self-harm content material on X.

From the age of 14, considered one of her killers, Jenkinson, loved watching movies of actual killing and torture on the darkish internet, fantasised about homicide and developed an curiosity in serial killers.

The documentary follows Ms Ghey as she travels to the US and meets Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at social media large Meta, who testified earlier than Congress about youngster security on the corporate’s platforms.

He tells her that individuals are “defenceless” in opposition to dangerous algorithms.

The movie additionally options officers from Cheshire Police, who converse in regards to the investigation into Brianna’s homicide, and movies of custody suite interviews with each killers, who had been caught inside 28 hours.

Brianna: A Mother’s Storywill air on Thursday March 27 at 9pm on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player.

Meta, X and TikTok have been contacted for remark.