Brianna Gay's murder prompts mother to call for social media ban on children under 16

Brianna Gay was stabbed to death last February. Photo: AP

Labour said it was “open-minded” about a potential ban on social media use by under-16s following the murder of Brianna Gay, the shadow technology minister has said.

Peter Kyle urged the public to “get ahead of the game” » in protecting children on the Internet after it emerged that Scarlett Jenkinson, one of the killers of a transgender schoolgirl, enjoyed watching videos of murder and torture on the Internet.

Esther Gay, Brianna's mother, is starting a petition to stop children from accessing social media apps. on their smartphones, saying her daughter «without a doubt» would not have been killed if stricter security measures had been in place.

Jenkinson and her accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe, both 16, were sentenced to life incarcerated Friday for the murder of Brianna, also 16. On February 11 last year, they stabbed her 28 times.

The pair wrote to each other about wanting to kill Brianna and other people they knew, while Jenkinson used a special «dark web» browser, a matrix of encrypted sites, to view extreme videos of real people being subjected to graphic violence.

< img src=" /wp-content/uploads/2024/02/5aa5f9b1f9dab4e93de928fbdb6af372.jpg" />Peter Kyle has called on society to “get ahead of the curve” in protecting children online. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Asked whether Labor would consider banning social media for under-16s, Mr Kyle responded to a question on BBC Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. : “I am open-minded about how we move forward.”

“I am already discussing with families of victims who have lost children due to the effects of social media, or how social media has become an aggravating factor in the death people and the harm caused to them.

“But what we need to do is ensure that all existing forces are deployed as quickly as possible. The guidance that will come from Ofcom as a result of the Online Safety Act will not come into force until later this year… We need to take control of the task ahead of us.» He also called on the regulator Ofcom to do more to combat the dark web, adding that if Labor came to power he would have the opportunity to persuade the regulator to «prioritise certain issues».

«I think Ofcom could look at the role of the dark web, in particular the route people take from social media to the dark web,» he said.

In his first interview since Jenkinson and Ratcliffe were sentenced, Brianna's mother told the same program that she was willing to meet Jenkinson's family and had «no hatred» for her daughter's killers, but was unable to forgive them.

She also called on parents to sign a petition demanding changes to the law, including the use of phones for under-16s who do not do so. allow access to social media apps.

“We would like to see a law passed that says mobile phones are only suitable for children under 16,” she said. “So if you're over 16, you can have an adult phone, but if you're under 16, you can have a kid's phone that won't have all the social media apps that are available now.

And also have software that automatically downloads to the parent's phone and connects to the child's phone and can highlight keywords. So if a child searches for words that Scarlett and Eddie searched for, it will be flagged on a parent's phone.»

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the government was already going «one step further» to protect children from online harm by consulting on a ban on mobile phones in the classroom.