One determined country's fight to stop social media from harming its children

In Australia, parents’ anxiety over their children’s exposure to a world near impossible to supervise has galvanised into concrete government action, as Angus Thompson reports

- Angus Thompson

Ellen Roome has said more than once that if her son had been hit by a car, his death would have at least made some kind of sense. But after finding 14-year-old Julian "Jools" Sweeney dead in his room on a night in April 2022, she is still searching for answers.

“Not one person in Jools’s life thought there was a problem. Not one teacher, not one adult, not one child,” Ms Roome says nearly three years later.

Her crusade is now squarely aimed at social media, and after finding out about the deaths of other British teenagers in similar circumstances, the Cheltenham mother has joined a group of parents suing TikTok over a dangerous online “blackout” challenge they believe their children took part in.

Ms Roome has tried to access her son’s social media accounts to see the content he was looking at before his death, but says she’s been blocked by the platforms. “I thought, well, we’re responsible for a minor. Why on earth can’t we see what he’s looking at?”

In the past week, the grief of another family involved in the action against TikTok was made plain before a coroner, who is investigating the death of Maia Walsh, a 13-year-old girl found dead in her Hertford bedroom in October 2022 after seeing concerning content on the platform. Months before, she had commented: “I don’t think I’ll live past 14.”

Harrowing tales like these have sparked a debate over the best ways to protect children from social media harm. The government is already facing criticism that new laws in force ordering tech companies to remove dangerous content are not robust enough, while prime minister Sir Keir Starmer batted away a Conservative push for a blanket phone ban in schools as “wasting time” and “completely unnecessary”.