Unpacking Online Harms: A Conversation with the Creative Minds behind Brianna: A Mother’s Story
“When I was in school, gosh any kind of bullying would stop at the gates of the school, you’d go home and that’d be your safe space. Now, if you’re young, there is no safe space. The internet, those apps, they come into your bedroom all the time.” That’s what director Iwan Roberts of the documentary Brianna: A Mother’s Story shared with our CEO, Imran Ahmed in a heartwarming conversation where they and the Production Manager Jo Lewis discussed the challenges of keeping your kids safe online and fighting for social media companies to be held accountable.
Brianna: A Mother’s Story explores the tragic story of Brianna, a 16-year-old transgender girl in the UK who was horrifically murdered by classmates who had been radicalized online & her mother Esther Ghey’s journey to fight for social media accountability and responsibility.
“You said between 14 and 24 is a period where people, young people, are sort of developed into adults. So if they’re exposed to, you know, violent content, many of it violence towards women, that surely has an effect on those young people.”
Imran, Iwan and Jo all spoke about how difficult it was to incentivize social media companies to remove extreme content from their platforms & protect their users—especially children.
Iwan shared, “What we hope by making this film is that it gave [Brianna’s mother] the opportunity to reach out to people in power. She’s had conversations with the Prime Minister in the past and her message of hope and change for good is sort of reached out there. And because of her personal story, people can learn from that and things can be added to legislation to pressure social media companies to put things in place and make a difference.”
Watch the full interview here.
CCDH created a Parent’s Guide to offer practical advice on how to help your child navigate online spaces. Download it for free here.