Father of 14-year-old who died by suicide urges government action on social media

The father of a 14-year-old girl who died by suicide after online bullying has urged the government to impose stricter rules on social media platforms. Mariano Janin told GB News that his daughter Mia had shown no visible signs of distress before her death.

He said the bullying occurred on Snapchat and TikTok shortly after the second lockdown ended. An inquest found that Mia had been subjected to bullying on those platforms before she took her own life. Janin stated that neither he nor his late wife noticed changes in her behavior at the time.

Evidence access issues Janin said police lost one of Mia's phones and the SIM card from another, preventing him from reviewing the evidence. He noted that a video had circulated among students and that the school asked pupils to delete it after her death. He added that the second coroner did not treat the deletion of evidence as suspicious.

Calls for regulation Ahead of a meeting with the prime minister, Janin said further consultation is unnecessary because the harms of social media for children have been documented for years in multiple countries. He called on the government to hold social media companies accountable and require them to change their business models.

Janin argued that only government action can create a legal framework strong enough to address the issue. He described a generation of young people who are "stuck to screens" and said the problem is both addictive and harmful.