Meta and Pinterest questioned over suicide of British teenager

Senior Meta Platforms and Pinterest executives were quizzed over the malign influence of social media algorithms on young people at an inquest into the death of a British teenager. A two-week London inquest is examining factors that caused the death of 14year-old Molly Russell who died by suicide in 2017. The coroner will decide whether her prolific social media use played a part. Russell, who was suffering from poor mental health, engaged with tens of thousands of social media posts in the six months before she died that included “dark” content depicting self harm and suicide. She was an active user of Pinterest and Meta’s Instagram.