A bereaved mother is taking on social media giants over fears her teenage son killed himself in a sick online challenge, as she seeks to introduce a new law.
Jools Sweeney, 14, was found dead in his bedroom after taking his own life in April 2022. His mother, Ellen Roome, fears he fell victim to a ‘dark and dangerous’ game such as Blackout – linked to the deaths of dozens of young people.
She has since been campaigning for “Jools’ Law” – which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they died. She says having access to his social media could provide the evidence needed to explain his death.
Without full access to his social media data, the 48-year-old mum from Cheltenham, Gloucester, has no way of knowing what happened to her son on the day of his death. Ms Roome said: “He was massive on social media. He did a lot of online challenges.
“Harmless challenges I thought were just fun and I wasn’t aware of some dangerous dark challenges that are on social media. “If we had access to it [data] we would have had answers to why a 14-year-old decided to end his life.
“It is horrific – to lose a child and not understand why he decided to end his life is terrible. He was a happy child, always laughing, always smiling with plenty of friends. Over 500 people went to his funeral – there wasn’t anybody in his life that had concerns about him.
“When it happened it was completely out of the blue. I had spoken to him one hour and a half before it happened.”
Ms Roome said she has spent thousands in legal fees trying to get data from Jools’ accounts – so far, without any success. She has had meetings with TikTok and exchanged emails with Meta and Snapchat – but without a court order she said they can’t provide her information.
TikTok explains it no longer has watch or search history for Jools, because the law requires companies to delete people’s personal data unless it is needed for running a business.
Thee company said there are exceptions to this law, such as if police request for data to be preserved, however it said it was not contacted by officers until 2024 when the information was no longer available.
TikTok said it was not trying to prevent Ellen from getting answers. Snapchat has enabled Ms Roome to access the messages still visible in her son’s account.
But deleted messages get deleted from the company’s servers and are no longer available, with Snapchat willing to cooperate with any requests from authorities for additional data to the fullest extent possible.
Ms Roome said she did not want any other parents to go through the same thing. She added: “It’s never going to bring my son again so it’s never gonna make me happy. I have spent a lot of money – it is expensive and I’m just a normal person who desperately wants answers to why my child isn’t here.”
A petition to have the issue debated in Parliament has surpassed 126,000 signatures. It was debated in Parliament on Monday, January 13
Asking how the debate went in Parliament Ms Roome said: “I couldn’t have asked for a better result – it was amazing. It was very emotional.
“Sitting with the bereaved parents who all want answers and every single MP agreed with my petition and afterwards the minister spoke to me to hopefully amending the data bill to include my provisions requested to provide us access to social media.”
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