The mother of murdered teenager Briannha Ghey said a campaign to enforce stricter online safety rules for children has reached a “pivotal point”. Esther Ghey said it was “emotional” to join other bereaved parents in their pursuit of reforms surrounding social media use and harmful content.
The meeting comes as Ofcom, the UK media regulator, sets out new rules for tech firms to keep children safe online. Campaign group Bereaved Families for Online Safety have written to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to say the new rules do not go far enough.
‘Brainwashing'
Ofcom has published a proposed new set of rules which feature more than 40 practical measures, including age verification processes to stop children accessing harmful material. It comes after the UK adopted the Online Safety Act last year, which imposes tougher rules on sites that can be accessed by children.
However, Ms Ghey said the proposals do not offer enough guidance for parents. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, she said: “We need support to be able to safeguard our children better.
“When you are fed the same algorithm, it’s essentially brainwashing children.
“The Online Safety Act is great but we also need something else there such as child safe smartphones.” She said she did feel largely “positive” about the proposals and the opportunity for change.
Ms Ghey said Brianna, who was murdered by teenagers Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, who were said to be obsessed with various graphic online content, was also viewing harmful content online. She said: “It makes me feel a bit ashamed that I didn't prevent her from looking.
“But when you've been through something like what we have been through, it could either break you or give you an extra level of mental resilience.”
Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, said the new legislation, which she described as putting “meat on the bones” of online safety, would be in place tomorrow, except it needed to be “bulletproof” for tech companies.
“These are companies that are multi-billion pound organisations – what we don't want to do is do it so fast that it has lots of loopholes or they can easily litigate and it's chewed up in the courts for years,” she said.
Ofcom chief Melanie Dawes said the regulator would be publishing details on which social media companies are working with the new legislation and which are not.
