Coroner links Norfolk schoolgirl's suicide to TikTok content
Ofcom had open TikTok investigation since June while charity calls algorithm probe overdue, regulator answers to government not users
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The head of online regulator Ofcom said there was no trust that the platforms could ‘clean up their own services’. Photograph: Imago/Alamy
theguardian.com
A coroner in Norfolk has found that a 14-year-old schoolgirl's access to suicide-related content on TikTok may have played a significant part in her decision to take her own life, nine years after the Molly Russell case prompted the same demands of the same regulator.
Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, viewed videos and images related to suicide on TikTok in the week before her death. Coroner Johanna Thompson said there was no way of knowing why Retyte acted as she did, but that the negative effects of viewing the online content may have been decisive. She is preparing a prevention of future deaths report to be circulated to bodies including Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator.
The finding landed amid a regulator already mid-procedure. Ofcom opened an investigation in June into whether TikTok was failing to meet its legal obligations to protect children from harmful content. Its chief executive, Melanie Dawes, told MPs that the large social media companies show no safety culture and are slow to acknowledge risks of criminal action, child grooming and algorithmic feeding of suicide and self-harm material. Trust that they can clean up their own services, she said, is simply not there.
The Molly Rose Foundation, the charity set up in Molly Russell's name, accuses Ofcom of being unwilling or unable to act on the deadly harm. Its chief executive, Andy Burrows, notes that of the teenagers still seeing high-risk suicide, self-harm and depression content, most saw it on TikTok, and demands the regulator open an investigation into the platform's algorithm without delay. A survey the foundation ran in summer 2026 of 1,825 children across 21 UK schools found one in three had been exposed to such content in the week before they were surveyed; seven percent had seen content that made suicidal thoughts seem normal, appealing, or cool.
TikTok offered its deepest sympathies and said it enforces strict rules against content promoting self-harm, using advanced technologies to proactively detect and remove violations. It is understood the company had not yet investigated what happened with Retyte's account.
The Online Safety Act already empowers Ofcom to act. The coroner's report will be circulated to the regulator that has had an open TikTok investigation since June.