by “Dad, can I download TikTok?” Maia asked her father politely, five months after her 13th birthday.
Liam Walsh double-checked the legal age for the app and said he was confident his mature son could use it responsibly. Like other teenagers, Maia refused to listen to her parents’ calls to hang up the phone while she spent hours lost in the virtual world.
But six months later, at 3.15am on October 7, Walsh received a phone call that will haunt him forever.
“Maia is dead,” her mother shouted. Her little girl had taken her life three weeks before her 14th birthday.
The father doted on his daughter, whom he described as a normal, happy 13-year-old girl who excelled in school and enjoyed playing Minecraft.
“I was a sweet, kind, happy girl until TikTok came along,” she said. “My world fell apart. In retrospect, I look back and wonder if something happened, I don’t know if she was dragged into a world that she didn’t have the maturity to understand.”
Walsh is one of several bereaved families sharing their heartbreaking stories of losing children in circumstances where social media is suspected of playing a role, after Ofcom unveiled its first steps to regulate the online sphere.
Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawe said the regulator “cannot waste a moment” in setting out how they protect children online. Ofcom will work alongside social media sites to ensure harmful material, such as child sexual abuse material, grooming and violent content, is removed.
Walsh is now campaigning for full transparency of Maia’s online data in the months before her death. As it stands, social media platforms have a 90-day retention policy.
The 48-year-old says he saw two disturbing videos romanticizing self-harm and suicide on his daughter’s TikTok, like the story seen by The independent.
“My quest is to find out what drove my daughter to do something so destructive and dangerous that Maia is losing her life. “There may be nothing to see, but I deserve the chance to find out.”
When asked for comment, TikTok cited its community guidelines which state that they do not allow the display, promotion or sharing of suicide or self-harm plans, and say that any content that violates these terms will be removed. The social media platform also says it publishes quarterly community guidelines compliance reports to hold itself accountable and claims that 98.1% of content removed in the second quarter of 2023 was proactively removed.
TikTok added that they work closely with Samaritans and the International Association for Suicide Prevention to remove harmful content while allowing users to share their problems safely.
But the Walshes are one of the only family to suffer such a painful loss. Isaac Kenevan was a typical teenager who loved games and sports. Last March, a coroner ruled he died due to “misadventure” after his mother Lisa found him dead on the bathroom floor.
Essex’s mother believes his death was due to an online “choking” challenge and says police found two videos of him taking part in it on his phone.
“My son was a typical teenager, he was a happy kid with friends,” the 51-year-old said. “He was very curious and enjoyed doing all the online challenges, like the ice bucket and bottle flip challenge. We never imagined he would hurt her.
“He was such a happy child who had nothing harmful in his body. “I can’t see another family go through what we have.”
Ms Kenevan is campaigning for the rights of parents and coroners to be able to request data online dating back more than three months.
It’s not just exposure to troubling material that is causing concern: social media has also played a role in an increasing number of court cases.
Olly Stephens was a kind boy from a quiet suburb of Reading who fell victim to gang culture when he was attacked online.
The 13-year-old became aware of a friend being “fashioned,” where a victim “is humiliated on camera and then blackmailed with the images.” Olly tried to alert the victim’s older brother, but the perpetrators in the video accused Olly of snitching and began abusing and controlling him, a court heard when his young killers went on trial.
On the afternoon of Sunday, January 3, 2021, the teenager shouted goodbye to his parents but never returned.
A 14-year-old girl lured Olly into meeting two boys, then aged 13 and 14, who killed him. The two boys were found guilty of murder at Reading Crown Court in September 2021. The 14-year-old girl admitted manslaughter and was sentenced to three years and three months in a young offenders’ institute.
His father, Stuart Stephens, 54, heard the screams as his son was stabbed to death just meters from their family home.
“I ran onto the field without my shoes. I knew he was gone,” she said. “I took his hand, I begged him not to leave me. She was completely lifeless.
He described the feeling of “impending doom” as he begged his son to tell him what was happening as the “cheeky” and “funny” boy became a shell of his former self before his death.
“We never understood the depth of the abuse he was receiving,” his father added. “Surely these apps have some kind of duty of care.”
A Snapchat spokesperson said: “This case is horrible and there is no place for this on Snapchat. One experience like this is one too many, but this doesn’t reflect the majority of the 21 million people who use Snapchat in the UK.
“We have clear rules about what is allowed and teams of moderators who review content reported to us or detected by our cutting-edge technology. Although Snaps disappear, in many cases the evidence does not disappear – we can preserve the content and take action, including working with police to support investigations.
“Being a popular platform among young people comes with additional responsibilities. That’s why we have additional protections for those under 18, tools for parents to help families know who their teens are talking to, and why we work with experts on all aspects of safety across the platform.”
Ofcom’s first goal is to remove minors from friend suggestion lists and block messages from strangers; They also hope to improve services for detecting and automatically removing harmful content, including dangerous suicide and self-harm content.
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said the publication of the first codes marked a “crucial” step in making the Online Safety Act a reality by “cleaning up the wild west of social media and making the UK the safest place.” of the world to be online.
