News Investigation

Esther Ghey: 'The Internet Unleashed Horrific Things'

Feb 2024 🇬🇧 New Statesman

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This New Statesman profile, published by Sarah Dawood shortly after the sentencing of her daughter Brianna's killers, is one of Esther Ghey's earliest in-depth interviews. In it, Ghey argues for banning social media apps on under-16s' devices and for stronger age-verification on platforms, and criticizes the Online Safety Act as insufficient. The piece describes Brianna's own history of self-harm and disordered eating, which the article says worsened alongside her exposure to harmful social media content, and introduces Ghey's Peace in Mind mindfulness campaign. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as an early, widely read statement of Ghey's policy positions in her own words, delivered to a mainstream political-current-affairs outlet, and notes that the piece frames platform exposure as associated with — not the sole explanation for — the deterioration in her daughter's wellbeing that Ghey describes.

CITATION

Sarah Dawood, "Esther Ghey: 'The Internet Unleashed Horrific Things,'" New Statesman (Encounter), 21 February 2024.

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