My lovely, caring daughter took her own life after viewing horrific online images. Yet we’re still not keeping children safe from criminal actions of social media giants
ASK Ruth Moss about her daughter Sophie and her face lights up. ‘She was just so caring,’ she says, sitting in the dappled sunlight of a May afternoon in her warm, elegant home.
‘She loved hugs and cuddles and she was bubbly and she was spirited. If somebody scraped their knee or was crying, she’d be the first one to put an arm around them and comfort them, no matter how she felt herself that day. She was a very caring, giving, lovely child.’
One Saturday morning in March 2014 Ruth’s world changed forever when Sophie was found dead at their home near Dundee. She had taken her own life.
‘I was a complete mess,’ says Ruth. ‘I was just distraught. I can’t even begin to describe how I was.’
While the flag flew at half-mast at Dundee High School, where Sophie had been a pupil, police took away Sophie’s electronic devices and discovered every parent’s worst nightmare.
At just 13 years old, Sophie had been looking at websites that gave tips on
‘Can any parent honestly say they know what their child does online?’
suicide, as well as viewing violent images of self-harm on her mobile phone.
‘I think for a lot of children 13 is a really difficult age and they will go through difficult times,’ says 51-year-old Ruth, who works as a nurse in Edinburgh.
‘Their mental health might not be the greatest, they’re going through a lot of changes, but I’ve always said the impact of what Sophie saw online affected her. And there was a lot of it.
‘Ultimately even the method by which Sophie died she found online.’
Nine years on, as the Online Safety Bill – which aims to create a new set of laws for children and adults online – makes its way through the House of Lords, Ruth remains angry at how easily her young daughter was able to access disturbing images, and the power wielded by social media companies over what children are exposed to on the internet.
‘I still can’t get my head round the fact that it has taken so long to get a piece of legislation to keep children safe,’ she says.
‘The internet has been here for so long and we are dealing with things like child safety and the ever-changing complex nature of the online world. Ultimately this is health and safety legislation. It should not have taken this long.’
Far from being wide-eyed about the issue, Ruth understands that parents must play their part.
‘Parents absolutely have a responsibility to look after their children online,’ she says.
‘And I did those things. I strictly limited the use of any access to the internet. I was one of those mothers that used to get the eye rolling from my children because I’d make them go out and play, I’d make them go for a walk or do something that was not related to TV or the internet. We had those conversations.’
But as Ruth now knows all too well, in today’s fast-moving technical world it is rarely enough.
‘Can any parent honestly, hand on heart say they know what their 12-year-old or 14-year-old child does online 24/7? Because that’s what we’re talking about.
‘That’s what they’d have to do to stop their children potentially accessing harmful material.
‘I honestly think 99 per cent of parents would not be able to give that answer. That’s why legislation is vital to keep children safe.’
Ruth is keen not to sugar-coat Sophie’s life.
As a child she says Sophie could be inquisitive and pushed boundaries and had, as she describes it, ‘a bit of a darker side’.
Ruth and Sophie’s dad had gone through a divorce and, later on, Sophie had received treatment at the NHS’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Things had not always been easy.
‘Early on in Sophie’s childhood I had a marriage breakup and she struggled with that and she struggled with some of her behaviour growing up,’ says Ruth.
‘But overall, generally she was, on a day-to-day basis, a happy child and we were a normal family.
‘She had friends at school and had a good relationship with her big brother. There were lots of real positives about her.’
Things changed, says Ruth, when Sophie was given her first mobile phone at the age of 12. ‘It was really so that I knew where she was if I was collecting her from school or if she had an after-school activity and I was going to be a few minutes late. It just meant that she had that method of communication.
‘But around that time her outlook on life took a real dip. And it was really difficult to extrapolate all the factors in that.
‘Was it hormones? Why was it that suddenly she’d started to display very difficult behaviour?
‘Not long after she got the phone, Sophie started to self-harm. It was a real shock because it didn’t tie in with the personality of the child that I knew.’
During an argument between mother and daughter, Ruth became aware Sophie was being extremely protective of her phone and ‘realised there must be something on it she must be hiding.’
After accessing it, Ruth discovered that not only was Sophie using the chat app WhatsApp – which Ruth didn’t even know she had – but she had been speaking to a man significantly older than her.
‘He’d sent half-naked images,’ says Ruth. ‘She was 12. He was 30. It was completely inappropriate.
‘The police investigated that and Sophie had actually created a
completely fake persona for herself. She had said she was somebody else. So nothing came of that and fortunately they never met.’
For Ruth though, the discovery was terrifying.
‘As a parent you think “oh my gosh, this is a real issue”.’
At the same time, Ruth also found ‘extremely upsetting’ violent pornographic imagery, as well as graphic guides and pictures of self-harming on Sophie’s phone.
‘It was a real wake up call for me,’ says Ruth. ‘At that point I took away everything. I gave her a plain phone that could only make calls, and locked down the wi-fi.’
Unfortunately, Sophie was able to find ways round her mother’s strict rules.
Her school asked for access to a tablet for school work, and while at first it was strictly regulated and kept at Dundee High, gradually, as the months went on, Ruth allowed her daughter to take it to and from school.
‘We’d also given her a phone back and started to reintroduce the ability to have access to the internet, albeit with parental controls on my side and the school’s side.’ But Sophie found ways round those restrictions.
‘On the bus there was free wi-fi, and in cafes,’ says Ruth.
‘She’d go to the ice rink on a Saturday morning and there was free wi-fi there too. She could access areas where there were no parental controls and she could do it all from her mobile phone.’
Ruth still can’t quite believe however, that the bright, caring, bubbly child she loved so much would take her own life.
‘I still have days where I think, did you really mean to?’ she says quietly. ‘I knew Sophie was struggling with low mood but I could never have imagined her doing that. I still can’t. I still can’t get round it.’
Tragically, Sophie’s is far from an isolated case. In 2017, 14-yearold Molly Rose Russell, from London, took her own life after viewing self-harm images on social media sites.
A coroner later concluded she died from an act of self-harm while suffering depression and the negative effects of online content.
Frankie Thomas, aged 15, from Surrey, died in 2018 after reading online content relating to selfharm and suicide that she accessed through a school iPad while on school premises.
Last year, research by Swansea University and the Samaritans discovered that more than 75 per cent of those surveyed saw selfharm content online for the first time at age 14 or younger.
Shockingly, individuals with a history of self-harm were more likely to report being ten or younger when they first viewed it. ‘Age restrictions on social media are not worth the paper they are written on,’ says Ruth.
‘Sophie managed to get round that by just saying she was older than she was, which is no different to what any other teen might do.
‘And the algorithms on those sites are set up so that when she did at one point click on images of self-harm, she saw more and more of them. It was hugely damaging.
‘If you click on a pair of shoes you’d have a social media feed full of shoes to buy. The site is designed to do that. And it might be designed to be harmless but what happens when it’s harmful material coming through? And the child is 12 or 13?’
Ruth has now partnered with the NSPCC charity to campaign for a number of amendments to the Online Safety Bill, including the demand for a children’s advocate that fights for their safety and interests.
‘You have some exceptionally powerful, profit-making companies in the online world and I think a children’s advocate would counterbalance some of that power to be a voice for children,’ she says. ‘They don’t have their own voice. An organisation that would look at risk and pre-empt some of those risks is really important.’
Ruth also believes that the senior executives of social media giants should face criminal action if they don’t face up to their responsibilities.
‘If I continued to wilfully break the law I would be in jail,’ she says. ‘I don’t see why senior executives should be treated any differently.
‘We’re talking about harm. Something that damages children. In any other area of life if you were running a service that harms children and you know you
‘Age restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on’
‘We’re talking about harm that damages children’
shouldn’t be and you continue to do that, you’d expect someone to be criminally accountable for that.
‘[The social media giants] have an awful lot of power and they should take responsibility for all that power.’
Ruth has since remarried and moved from Dundee to Edinburgh.
Life is busy. Her elder son, Sophie’s beloved big brother, is now in his twenties, while Ruth has changed focus in her job as a nurse, moving from critical care to clinical research.
On sunlit evenings she goes running in a nearby park. But Sophie is never far from her mind.
‘I absolutely adored her because she was so fun. She loved animals. She cared for things. And she cared for people.
‘She’s left a huge, huge hole. And you know what, I’ve filled that hole with lots of things, but there’s still a Sophie shaped hole there.
‘I loved her so much. You never get over that.’
■ To find out how to keep your child safe online, visit: www.nspcc. org.uk/keeping-children-safe/ online-safety/
For parenting support and advice, or if you have concerns about a child’s safety, phone the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk.
Children can contact Childline any time on 0800 1111 or www. childline.org.uk to talk about anything that may be worrying them.