A father of a teenager who died by suicide after seeing harmful posts on social media says similar content needs to be stopped.
Ian Russell - whose 14-year-old daughter Molly was found to have taken her own life in 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content online on platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest - believes the Online Safety Bill needs to stamp out the problem as it nears its final parliamentary stages, because there are "too many tragic stories to tell".
He told the BBC’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ that the legislation "will make the online world safer".
Ian added: "It is not perfect but it's an important step, and it's a step that has been needed for years to counter this technology.
"There are many other families, not just me, who have been campaigning for better online safety and the bereaved families for online safety group, for example, have too many tragic stories to tell.
"But if the bill fails to stop online harms that all our children saw, then it will have failed."
Online safety campaigner Ian hopes his daughter - who a coroner said passed away while suffering from the "negative effects" of online content - would be "proud".
He said: “I hope Molly would be proud.
"But there are so many other voices who are joining this cause, sadly, in the main because they've also lost children.
"And we hope that this step, the new Online Safety Bill, will mean there are fewer of those families and fewer stories like Molly's."
