Org Report

Report Revealing Children's Exposure to Suicide, Self-Harm, Depression and Eating Disorder Content Online

Oct 2025 🇬🇧 Molly Rose Foundation

Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.

Outside the U.S.? Find your local helpline at findahelpline.com.

Published by the Molly Rose Foundation — the UK charity founded and chaired by Ian Russell after his daughter Molly's 2017 death — this October 2025 briefing reports on children's exposure to suicide, self-harm, depression, and eating-disorder content on social media, surveyed in the weeks immediately before the Online Safety Act's child-safety duties took legal effect. The foundation's own summary states that, at that point, 'far too little had changed' since Molly's death, describing continued routine exposure of teenagers to this category of content on major platforms. It was framed by the foundation as a baseline for measuring the incoming law's effect, a comparison revisited in a follow-up 'wave two' study the following year. This entry draws on the foundation's public summary page, not the full report. TechKids Foundation cites it as documented, association-language evidence of an exposure pattern, not a claim about any individual case.

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CITATION

Molly Rose Foundation. "Report revealing children's exposure to suicide, self-harm, depression and eating disorder content online." October 2025. https://mollyrosefoundation.org/resource/report-revealing-childrens-exposure-to-suicide-self-harm-depression-and-eating-disorder-content-online/

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