The mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has urged Keir Starmer to ban social media for under-16s, adding to growing pressure on the prime minister before a crunch vote on the issue on Wednesday.
Esther Ghey wrote to Starmer on Monday explaining in detail how she felt her daughter’s eating disorder and self-harm had been exacerbated by TikTok influencers with whom she had become obsessed.
And she joined eight other sets of bereaved parents in calling for the government to back a move in the House of Lords to ban younger teenagers from accessing social media platforms entirely.
Ghey wrote: “Brianna had a social media addiction and struggled with her mental health from the age of 14. She developed an eating disorder and was self-harming, and all of this was significantly exacerbated by the harmful content she was consuming online.”
She added: “I was constantly having heated conversations with Brianna, who became determined that she wanted to be both TikTok famous and a sex worker.
“Alongside this, I was in constant fear about who Brianna might be speaking to online. I tried to monitor her phone through spot checks, but she was able to hide things from me very easily.”
The government is expected to publish a consultation this week on a range of options for improving child safety online, including a social media ban, though it remains unclear whether this would be enough to persuade Labour MPs and peers to back down.
Brianna was murdered in 2023 in Warrington, Cheshire, by two teenagers in a brutal attack partly motivated by her transgender identity.
Her mother later described how she had become obsessed with social media in the months before her death, accessing content related to anorexia and self-harm.
Brianna had cultivated a friendship with one of her killers, who at one point tried to poison her with ibuprofen, telling her it was MDMA. That girl had also been spending time in parts of the dark web, looking at websites that featured live abuse.
Esther Ghey explained in her letter to Starmer, which was also copied to Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, and Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, that trying to police her daughter’s social media use had convinced her that an outright ban was needed.
In the letter, she and the other parents wrote: “We are allowing an entire generation to have their time, attention, and potential consumed by platforms designed to keep them hooked.”
The parents are giving their backing to an amendment by the Conservative peer John Nash to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which would ban social media use among under-16s within a year of the bill passing. The amendment has been co-authored by peers from other parties, including the Labour member Luciana Berger.
The government has not yet said how it would deal with Nash’s amendment, and whether it would allow its members to vote for it.
The Guardian revealed this weekend that more than 60 Labour MPs, including select committee chairs and former members of the government, have also written to the prime minister calling for him to back a ban.
Starmer has said he is open to the idea, but his allies say he has concerns about how it is implemented and whether it could push some children on to the dark web.
The prime minister said at a press conference on Monday: “I think we need to do more to protect children and that’s why we’re looking at a range of options and saying that no options are off the table. We’re obviously looking at what’s happened in Australia [which enacted a ban in December] – something I have discussed with the Australian prime minister.”
