Molly Russell's father Ian has urged social media companies not to "drag their feet" in implementing recommendations by the coroner in his daughter's inquest, including separate platforms for adults and children and better self-regulation.
Senior coroner Andrew Walker sent his report to businesses such as Meta, Pinterest, Twitter and Snapchat as well as to Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, telling them: "In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you and/or your organisation have the power to take such action."
He said they were under a duty to respond within 56 days - by December 8 - with "details of action taken or proposed to be taken, setting out the timetable for action. Otherwise you must explain why no action is proposed."
Molly, 14, from Harrow in north-west London, ended her life in November 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content online, prompting her family to campaign for better internet safety.
In a statement issued through lawyers, Mr Russell said: "We welcome this report by the coroner, which echoes our concerns about the online dangers Molly was exposed to, and pushed towards by the platforms' algorithms. We urge social media companies to heed the coroner's words and not drag their feet waiting for legislation and regulation, but instead to take a proactive approach to self-regulation to make their platforms safer for their young users.
"They should think long and hard about whether their platforms are suitable for young people at all. The Government must also act urgently to put in place its robust regulation of social media platforms to ensure that children are protected by from the effects of harmful online content, and that platforms and their senior managers face strong sanctions if they fail to take action to curb the algorithmic amplification of destructive and extremely dangerous content or fail to remove it swiftly. I hope this will be implemented swiftly through the Online Safety Bill which must be passed as soon as possible."
Mr Walker said after the inquest that an independent regulatory body should be considered to monitor online platform content, adding: "I recommend that consideration is given to enacting such legislation as may be necessary to ensure the protection of children from the effects of harmful online content and the effective regulation of harmful online content. Although regulation would be a matter for Government, I can see no reason why the platforms themselves would not wish to give consideration to self-regulation taking into account the matters raised above."
Instagram's parent company Meta said it supported more regulation of social media.
A company spokesperson said: "We're committed to making Instagram a safe and positive experience for everyone, particularly teenagers, and are reviewing the Coroner's report. We agree regulation is needed and we've already been working on many of the recommendations outlined in this report, including new parental supervision tools that let parents see who their teens follow, and limit the amount of time they spend on Instagram.
"We also automatically set teens' accounts to private when they join, nudge them towards different content if they've been scrolling on the same topic for some time and have controls designed to limit the types of content teens see. We don't allow content that promotes suicide or self-harm, and we find 98% of the content we take action on before it's reported to us. We'll continue working hard, in collaboration with experts, teens and parents, so we can keep improving."
A Pinterest spokesperson said: "Our thoughts are with the Russell family. We've listened very carefully to everything that the coroner and the family have said during the inquest.
"Pinterest is committed to making ongoing improvements to help ensure that the platform is safe for everyone and the coroner's report will be considered with care. Over the past few years, we've continued to strengthen our policies around self-harm content, we've provided routes to compassionate support for those in need and we've invested heavily in building new technologies that automatically identify and take action on self-harm content. Molly's story has reinforced our commitment to creating a safe and positive space for our Pinners."
