Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly died in 2017 aged 14, will appear in a 30-second advert shown before selected UK screenings of The Social Reckoning. In the advert, he says: “Instagram helped kill my daughter.”
Russell says that “too little has changed” since Molly’s death. The campaign asks viewers to support the Molly Rose Foundation (MRF), which works to stop technology companies such as Meta endangering young people.
Where the advert will appear
The advert will be shown at Everyman, Curzon, Showcase and AMC cinemas screening the film in the UK. Pearl & Dean offered the foundation free cinema advertising space for the campaign.
In the message, Russell says that promises to improve online safety have failed and alleges that algorithms continue to push streams of toxic material towards children. He asks people who believe harmful technology is unacceptable, and that executives including Mark Zuckerberg should be held accountable, to support the foundation.
Kathryn Jacob, chief executive of Pearl & Dean, said audiences value advertising that is relevant to the setting in which they see it. She said the foundation worked with the company to create a campaign connected to the film.
A second campaign for parents
Bauer Media Audio, which owns Absolute Radio, Kiss and Jazz FM, is also donating advertising space to the Molly Rose Foundation. In a separate advert voiced by Russell, parents looking for advice are asked to contact the charity.
The campaigns are timed to coincide with the release of The Social Reckoning, a film about Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire that opens on Friday. It covers Frances Haugen’s testimony to the US Congress and her revelations about Facebook and Instagram’s approach to online safety.
Haugen’s evidence included internal research about the impact of Instagram content on teenage girls’ mental health. The company said at the time that reporting had focused on a limited set of findings and presented them negatively.
What the inquest found
A 2022 inquest into Molly’s death was described as a landmark moment for online safety. The coroner ruled that Molly “died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” and that algorithms had sent her harmful material she had not requested.
Russell accused Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, of guiding his daughter towards content relating to self-harm, suicide and depression. The source reports those statements and the coroner’s findings as part of the case; they do not independently establish every claim about causation.
Meta later donated to the Molly Rose Foundation in lieu of a legal settlement with Molly’s family. The company has said it introduced safety measures since Molly’s death, including automatically placing teenagers under 18 in private accounts and limiting who can message them and the content they can see.
The film stars Mikey Madison as Haugen and Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg. Its subject matter has renewed public attention on the continuing debate over how social media platforms protect children and how responsibility should be assigned when harmful content reaches young users.
AI tools were used to assist with the preparation of this article.
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