Online Act not robust sufficient, Brianna Ghey’s mum says

By Carolina Stanton On Feb 6, 2024

The mom of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has known as for “drastic action” to guard kids after rejecting Rishi Sunak’s insistence the Online Safety Act was sufficient.

On Sunday Esther Ghey stated kids have to be stopped from having entry to social media apps.

She has now reiterated the decision after the prime minister stated the brand new regulation alone could be strong sufficient.

Brianna, 16, was stabbed to demise after being lured to a park in Cheshire.

Her teenage killers – Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe – have been given life sentences on Friday.

The pair, each 15 on the time of the homicide, had a fascination with violence, torture and homicide and had deliberate the killing for weeks utilizing a messaging app.

Jenkinson had additionally watched movies of violence and torture on the darkish net.

Ms Ghey is campaigning for under-16s to be blocked from accessing social media on smartphones and stronger parental controls to flag probably dangerous searches to oldsters.

Asked what adjustments she want to see made within the smartphone business, Ms Ghey informed BBC Breakfast: “We’d like to see mobile phone companies take more responsibility.

“I want to see the regulation change in order that kids solely have entry to kids’s cellphones, and that might look precisely the identical as an grownup’s cell phone however with out the power to obtain social media apps, and there’s software program out there already.

“Schools use it and we could link it up to a parent’s phone and if any words are being searched like the words that were searched during the run-up [to Brianna’s murder]… it could be flagged up on a parent’s phone, and then parents are aware of any concerning things that children are looking at.”

Ms Ghey stated she thought the Online Safety Bill was “a step in the right direction” however wouldn’t be sufficient by itself.

She added: “I think that we do need something a little bit more drastic for children.”

Asked whether or not a cell phone was the reason for what occurred to Brianna, Ms Ghey stated: “I’m not sure whether it started it all, but it definitely didn’t help.

“I feel that the content material that they [her killers] have been on-line, it in all probability fed what was already there.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted he believed the Online Safety Act was robust enough to protect children online.

He stated the brand new regulation gave Ofcom the facility “to really speak to social media corporations and be certain that kids aren’t uncovered to dangerous content material on-line”.