The father of Molly Russell will tell UK cinemagoers “Instagram helped kill my daughter” before screenings of a new film about Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire. Speaking in an advert to be shown before The Social Reckoning, released on Friday, Ian Russell says “too little has changed” since the death of his 14 year-old daughter, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content on Instagram. In a 30-second ad he will ask viewers of the Aaron Sorkin film about the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to donate to the Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) to “stop companies like Meta endangering young people like Molly”.
The ad will be screened at Everyman, Curzon, Showcase and AMC cinemas showing the film in the UK after the cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean offered space to MRF for free. Speaking directly to the audience, Ian Russell will say: “I’ve said it for years: Instagram helped kill my daughter. Promises to deliver safety have failed.
Algorithms still force streams of toxic content on to children. So if you agree harmful tech is unacceptable and bosses like Mark Zuckerberg should be held accountable, please support Molly Rose Foundation to stop companies like Meta endangering young people like Molly.” Kathryn Jacob, the chief executive of Pearl & Dean, said: “We know that audiences appreciate advertising that is contextually relevant. The team at the Molly Rose Foundation worked hard to deliver a campaign that works with the film.” Bauer Media Audio, the owner of the Absolute Radio, Kiss and Jazz FM brands, is also donating free advertising space to MRF for a separate advert, also voiced by Ian Russell, in which he asks parents seeking advice to contact the charity.
Haugen’s revelations about Facebook and Instagram’s approach to online safety, detailed in the Sorkin film, included internal research showing Instagram content had a negative impact on teenage girls’ mental health. At the time Zuckerberg’s company said the coverage of the research “focused on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light”. The film also covers Haugen’s testimony to the US Congress in which she said the social media corporation put “astronomical profits before people”, harmed children and destabilised democracies.
Haugen is played in the film by the Oscar winner Mikey Madison while Zuckerberg is played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong. The Guardian’s review of the film, a quasi-sequel to the Sorkin-scripted The Social Network, says it “rattles along at an entertaining clip”, adding that Strong – taking over from Jesse Eisenberg in Social Network – delivers a “very interesting Zuckerberg impersonation, standing and sitting like a Thunderbird puppet”. The 2022 inquest into Molly’s death was a landmark moment for online safety.
The coroner ruled that “died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” and that algorithms had pushed harmful content to Molly that she had not requested. At the time Ian Russell accused Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, of guiding his daughter on a “demented trail of life-sucking content” that included material related to self-harm, suicide and depression. Meta later made a donation to MRF in lieu of a legal settlement to Molly’s family.
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