Molly Russell tragedy ‘will happen again’ without action

CHILDREN are still being bombarded with content promoting self-harm on social media sites which could lead to a repeat of the Molly Russell tragedy, the children’s commissioner has warned.

Dame Rachel de Souza will today publish research showing 45 per cent of children aged eight to 17 are seeing unsolicited “upsetting and worrying” content often driven to them by social media algorithms.

Speaking exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, she said: “The content included anonymous trolling, diet restriction – that’s boys as well as girls – pornography, self harm, sexualised images and violent and gory content.

“This shouldn’t be available to children and the tech companies should be making sure it’s taken down.”

Asked if there could be a repeat of a child like Molly taking their own life after viewing self-harm and suicide content, as the 14-year-old did in 2017, Dame Rachel said: “I think it absolutely could and can happen.

“I look at my own time as a head teacher and I’ve seen the most dreadful things happen for children who’ve been targeted with social media information that they really shouldn’t have had.”

Her research, based on the experiences of 2,000 youngsters showed two thirds of parents were most concerned about what their children might see on Tiktok. The platform was the worst for the proportion of youngsters seeing “worrying or upsetting” sexualised images, at 15 per cent, followed by Snapchat and Instagram on 12 per cent.

Youtube was the worst for violent or gory content, at 14 per cent.

Dame Rachel has urged the Government to reintroduce its Online Safety Bill as soon as possible.