Please note, this Fresh Perspectives article contains mentions of suicide.
On a night in November 2017, Molly spent an evening watching TV with her family. She’d packed her school bag for the next day, shared in excitement for Christmas and the upcoming family holiday, and even asked her father, Ian Russell, about work experience opportunities.
That night, Molly ended her life. She was 14 years old.
“Why?” was, and continues to be, the immediate question a grief-stricken Ian asked himself. His search for answers led him to Molly’s social media accounts, an area of her life she had seemingly paid the least amount of attention to.
She’d already deleted her Twitter (now known as X) account and was more interested in playing with in-built filters on Snapchat. Molly, like most girls her age, only really followed celebrities and pop stars on Instagram.
But as his search deepened, Ian Russell uncovered something sinister hidden in the depths of Big Tech’s platforms.
Here, along with filmmaker Marc Silver, Ian Russell tells us Molly’s story and his fight for awareness, change and justice.
“Rather than get angry, I try to remember the positive effects. What’s changed in the 9 years most since Mollie’s death is that events like this happen and people like you come to them. People are interested and want to know more.”
- Ian Russell, Molly’s father.
This talk was a part of Lush’s programme of ‘Lush Talks’ at Lush Fest — our series of in-store experiences which, amongst a lot of other events, included interactive panels focused on digital wellbeing and workshops for logging off social platforms.
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