Molly Russell's death may spark social media reforms for US kids – New York Post

A London coroner has blamed social media for the suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell. In a global first, a London coroner has blamed social media for the suicide of a teenage girl — potentially opening the legal floodgates against industry heavyweights like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. But the tragic case of Molly Russell could also point the way toward life-saving legislative reforms. That is, if Big Tech doesn’t pull the plug. Molly was 14 years old when she took her own life in 2017, after secretly delving into “the bleakest of worlds” on Instagram and Pinterest, her father Ian Russell told North London Coroner’s Court on Sept. 21. Without the family’s knowledge, Molly — once “full of love and bubbling with excitement for what should have lay ahead in her life” — was “pushed into a rabbit hole of depressive content,” her father said, as the two sites’ artificial-intelligence algorithms directed a continual stream of dark and hopeless content to her feed and in-box. Proprietary algorithms keep social media users hooked, and lock their attention to their screens, by feeding them more of what the programs predict they want. Once Molly engaged with posts related to depression and self-harm,…
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