Molly Russell was 14 when she took her own life in 2017 after months of viewing content relating to self-harm and suicide on social media. Nearly a decade later, her best friends from school, interviewed for this documentary, have grown into articulate, impressive women in their early 20s. Watching them, you can’t help but be struck all over again by the terrible tragedy of Molly’s death and the loss to her family, who will never see the young woman Molly would be now. Her father, Ian Russell, says life before Molly’s death was absolutely normal; in the years since, he has become a leading campaigner for better online protection for children.
On the night Molly died, Russell says, they sat down together as a family, in front of the TV. Molly’s last message to her friend Nieve was two laughing emojis. She had been feeling depressed, but no one suspected how bad it was. Nor were they aware of the content being fed to Molly by Instagram and Pinterest’s algorithms. In the months before her death she accessed thousands of harmful social media posts. One reads: “Dear me, I hate you. You’re weak. You deserve the pain. You’ll never be good enough. I hope you die.” At the inquest into Molly’s death, Meta’s head of health and wellbeing policy, Elizabeth Lagone, told the court the majority of posts Molly saw were “safe” for children. Nothing to see here.
Molly vs the Machines recreates moments from the inquest, which concluded that social media content contributed “more than minimally” to Molly’s death. Film-maker Marc Silver also speaks to tech company whistleblowers; the film deploys AI to generate images and narration, which feels a bit gimmicky.
In the end, it’s the interviews with those who loved Molly that give the film its power and precision. Ian Russell talks about how his life can be split in two: before Molly died and afterwards; and one of her friends expresses frustration at the lack of action to protect young people: “How many Mollies does it have to take?”
Molly vs the Machines is at Glasgow film festival and in UK cinemas on 1 March.