Brianna Ghey’s mum asks for social media ban for under 16s

The mother of murdered Brianna Ghey has asked the government to ban access to social media apps for under 16s. In the wake of her daughter's killing, Esther Ghey said if they were banned, Brianna would still be alive today.

Brianna's killers plotted the murder on a messaging app, whilst Scarlett Jenkison, who received the harshest of the sentences, had watched videos of violence and torture on the dark web.

Esther Ghey says it's "just not doable" for parents to constantly monitor their children's activity constantly, and has called for apps to be banned, and searches to flag up to parents.

She said: "We'd like a law introduced so that there are mobile phones that are only suitable for under-16s.

"So if you're over 16, you can have an adult phone, but then under the age of 16, you can have a children's phone, which will not have all of the social media apps that are out there now. And also to have software that is automatically downloaded on the parents' phone which links to the children's phone, that can highlight key words.

"So if a child is searching the kind of words that Scarlett and Eddie [Ratcliffe] were searching, it will then flag up on the parent's phone."

Ghey said that had this have been in place, she has no doubt Brianna would still be alive. She added that the killers wouldn't have been able to search for violent videos, and "if they did search it then the parents would know and to be able to get them some kind of help."

Ghey also said that she had struggled to monitor what Brianna was consuming online - and that she had accessed pro-anorexia and self-harm material.