Instagram promises to take down all posts about methods of suicide and self harm after a campaign by the dad of 14 year old Molly Russell, who took her own life after viewing distressing posts. She was such a. Such a force for good. She always wanted to help people. So im pretty certain that she would be pushing for change. So that young people were safe when they were online. And that if they need help, they can more easily find it. Mollys dad, ian, is here in the studio with 13 year olds Aoife Odriscoll and Trinity Bradford to talk about what they see on social media and how it affects them. And if youre a woman who wants to freeze your eggs for anything other than medical reasons the law says theyll be destroyed after ten yea rs. A Campaign Launches today calling for that to change. Well talk to these two women who both faced losing their eggs when they neared the ten year limit. Hello, welcome to the programme. Were live until 11 this morning. If youre off school for half term, do get in touch and let us know what sort of upsetting or sinister material have you seen online. Where you searching for it or did it come up inadvertently . We will devote a fair part of our programme for it. How did it make you feel send us a text 61124 or tweet me use the hastage victorialive. Lots of you getting in touch about that brexit extension until 31st january. Paul on twitter great. This tele novela has been renewed for a third season. Jason on twitter thank you eu. You calmness and rationality is embarrassing when compared to our lot. Appy on twitter this will go on forever. Also have you frozen your eggs . Let us know why. E mail us. So much to talk about. Firstly, Carrie Gracie with the news. The eu has agreed to grant a flexible extension to the uks depature from the bloc until the 31st of january. European Council President donald tusk tweeted following a meeting of ambassadors from the 27 other member states. It means the uk could leave the eu sooner if a deal is approved by parliament. Later mps will vote on Boris Johnsons call for a general election on the 12th of december. A lorry driver is due in court today, charged in connection with the deaths of 39 people found in a refrigerated lorry container in essex. Maurice robinson is facing charges of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people and Money Laundering. In vietnam, police are collecting dna from people who fear their relatives are among those who died. Instagram has told the bbc its extending a ban on graphic posts to include material about self harm and suicide including pictures, drawings and cartoons. Its the companys latest response to public concern over the death of 14 year old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing such content. Her father ian has called on the company to speed up the changes. In a few minutes, victoria will be speaking to ian, as well as social media users, about the move. Allies of the United States have warned that the fight against the Islamic State group is not yet over, in spite of the death of its leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. President Emmanuel Macron said the raid was a blow to the group and that france would continue to work towards iss definitive defeat. Britain described it as an important moment but not the end of the organisation. There have been further reports that another Senior Leader of the group has been killed. The family of a british backpacker who disappeared after a beach party in cambodia have flown to the country to join searches for her. Amelia bambridge, whos 21 and from worthing in sussex, was last seen in the resort of koh rong on wednesday, but did not return to her hostel. Her handbag containing her purse, phone and bank cards has been found on a beach nearby. A rescue operation to save a toddler stuck in a narrow well in india has gone into its third day. Heavy machinery is being used to dig a second hole, parallel to the one the child fell into, in the state of tamil nadu. Oxygen is being pumped to the two year old boy but layers of mud mean the rescuers cant assess the childs condition. Thats our news summary, now back to victoria for the rest of the programme. Molly russell was just 1a when she took her own life in 2017. When herfamily looked into her Instagram Account after her death they found distressing material about depression, suicide and self harm. After a committed campaign by her dad, Ian Instagram has pledged to remove all posts about methods of suicide and self harm including pictures, drawings and even cartoons. Well talk to ian russell in a moment. He believes instagram is partly responsible for his daughters death and hes taken his campaign to clean up social media to Silicon Valley. You may find some of the material in this report upsetting. I expect it will be quite an emotional thing for me given whats happened to our family. Children are literally dying every day. Itjust needs to be shut down. This isntjust for molly. This is for every young, wasted life. I think thats why mollys story has probably taken off, that it is a modern day nightmare. I personally have had as young as seven year old who have had a full on attempt of suicide. Free hess is a paediatric doctor that works in an emergency room in florida. The numbers are rising rapidly. The ages are decreasing significantly. Do you think this is connected with social media . Absolutely. Absolutely connected with social media. We can go right on in here. And thats pretty graphic. I dont know that theres one picture here thats not showing blood or a scar. Like a grooming process. Especially instagram, because, you know, you follow one hashtag to another, hashtag to another hashtag, and its grooming that person to self harm more, consider suicide more. And maybe even take action on that. And at 5. 38, he found her lifeless body. Diane grossman is the mother of mallory grossman. Sadly, dianes another parent bereaved by suicide and she goes into schools and gives extraordinary talks to quite young children. One building, one high school, had nine suicides in one year. Nine children. Hindsight is cruel. Hindsight is very cruel. Thats the toughest thing to cope with, is it . Yes, it is. I share that people think that the worst day of my life was the day that she died. And i would say, no, its the day before. It was the day before. A million things you wish youd done differently. If i could sit down at the table with mark zuckerberg, could i make your product better . Could i make it safer . What a great way for you to attaboy each other and high five, each other in the boardroom if you actually put an infrastructure and a system to protect children. I think that there are still some, even if its one in 100, that stay on the site because we havent found them yet. Our technology hasnt become as strong as it needs to be to find all of them. I dont think well ever be in a place where every single image that violates our policies is off of our platform. But its our responsibility to get that number to as close to zero as possible. I think, in many ways. Mollys with me every day. And ive wondered what she might, might have thought, had she still been alive about such things. And i think. She was such a. Such a force for good. She always wanted to help people. So im pretty certain that she would be pushing for change. So that young people were safe when they were online. And that if they need help, they can more easily find it. If youre feeling emotionally distressed and would like details of organisations which offer advice and support. Go online to bbc. Co. Uk actionline or you can call for free at any time. Lets talk to ian russell. Mollys dad. Also with us 13 year olds aoife 0driscoll and Trinity Bradford who both have Instagram Accounts, they re here with their mum and dads permission; and Bernadka Dubicka is chair of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of psychiatrists. The nature of our conversation mean we will be talking about suicide and self harm so please ensure children arent watching if you think it will affect them. Thank you all forjoining us on the programme. I want to ask you first of all, ian, since your daughters death, what have you learned about the power of social media . There are many things i have learned since molly has died. The first has nothing to do with social media. I think that is the prevalence of Mental Ill Health. I was lulled into a false sense of security. I thought it was something that did not happen that often, but probably to other people in a misguided way. But there are figures that show Something Like one infourof are figures that show Something Like one in four of us will suffer an episode of Mental Ill Health in any given year. It is really quite common. So the first thing that is important for us all to know, particularly young people as they are growing up, is that it is almost to be expected that at some point in your life, you will have a bad day. We are quite used to that. Then, when you know that, it is important to know how to react. Because i suspect molly found herself in a bad place. And, she was always someone who was very good at solving her own problems, she was very independent. Gorgeous, warm and adoring, and would ask for help. But if she could sort things out for herself, she would. My belief is that she, as many youngsters would, she looked for help on the internet because thatis for help on the internet because that is where you find all sorts of lovely a nswers a nd that is where you find all sorts of lovely answers and she may well have received tremendous support and good advice but, among that, among that good advice and support, she found harmful content. She found it very easily. And she found it in places i had no idea such content would exist. She found it on public platforms such as instagram. Content that encouraged self harm, content that encouraged self harm, content that gave you tips on how to do it so that gave you tips on how to do it so you would not be discovered. Content that linked to self harm to depression and suicide. Content that normalised that sort of world, content that persuaded people who saw it that there was no alternative and no future. And any future was very bleak. And content that, in the end, helped to persuade molly to end her life. Ian, i want end, helped to persuade molly to end her life. Ian, iwant to introduce you to aoife and trinity, they are both 13. When you hear in speak like that, what do you want to say to him . It is compelling, really. And what you are doing is incredible work. It is amazing and the fact you are helping so many other people is incredible. It is really inspirational. I cannot imagine what you are going through. Inspirational. I cannot imagine what you are going throughli inspirational. I cannot imagine what you are going through. I think i cannot imagine what im going through, and im going through it. The reason we are doing it, and we discussed it for a long time as a family whether or not to talk about mollys death publicly and the only reason we decided to is to hopefully prevent other such waste of young life. Youve turned it into something so positive. It is amazing. It is incredible. Can i ask, have you ever come across things you dont want to have seen on social media. Yes. Quite a lot, to be honest. There are things you are not looking for, and it can even be comedy and joked about and it really shouldnt be. It is very suggestive. What can be checked about, suicide and self harm . Suggestive. What can be checked about, suicide and selfharm . Even the smallest thing. It is definitely very normalised, and it is monday morning, i want to kill myself. Things like that. You have seen things that say things like that . Yes, and its in a comedic way, like it isa yes, and its in a comedic way, like it is a joke. And it really shouldnt be. The way it has been normalised. It doesnt actually happen . We can joke normalised. It doesnt actually happen . We canjoke about it. It is only in movies, things like that. But it does happen. And it builds up overtime, ican but it does happen. And it builds up overtime, i can imagine. Seeing that repeated a lot. It definitely would take a toll on your Mental Health. In the film, ian, diane spoke about hindsight. How hindsight is cruel, and she reflects on what she might have done differently. I am guessing that you may have had those reflections . I think any pa rent those reflections . I think any parent bereaved by suicide will inevitably blame themselves. For the rest of their lives. Do you . Yes, everyday. It is not the job of a pa rent to everyday. It is not the job of a parent to outlive one of your children. Inevitably, you feel you have not done yourjob properly. You may understand the reasons behind that, and logically you might think lots of things have led to the death of your daughter but ultimately, as a parent, you will spend the rest of your day blaming yourself. In the case of molly specifically, there we re case of molly specifically, there were signs that we took to be the normal signs of a 1a year old. Molly had just my older sisters, and she spent a little bit more time alone in her room, just like her sisters. And before her, she was keen on horse riding but she gave that up earlier in the year, saying that she had plateaued and wasnt improving enough. She wanted to give it a break and go back to it which sounded like a reasonable reason for doing so. They are all signs which, with the benefit of hindsight, you wish you had just booked a little bit more about it. I always say that there were a handful of tiny signs that when we look back with hindsight, all the little clues line up. Now, they look like a positive glue at the time. There we re positive glue at the time. There were big gaps between, and each isolated thing was hard to spot. But as you say it felt normal to you at the time. Do you speak to your pa rents the time. Do you speak to your parents about how you are feeling all the time . Or parents about how you are feeling all the time . 0rdo parents about how you are feeling all the time . Or do you keep it to yourself and share with friends . Not keep it to myself but not all the time. It is like when someone says, how are you doing . And you say, im doing good. You wouldnt go, oh, actually, today im feeling like this. It isjust conversation. You would say i am fine, thats a normal thing to say. One of the things we think we should have done as a family, instead of saying, are you 0k, molly . And she would answer, im fine. We would ask what is wrong if we thought she was more quiet than normal because it may have encouraged her to say actually, im having a bad day today. Was there any point where you were like, that is not like her . 0r any point where you were like, that is not like her . Or was it a shot . The worst or was it a shock . The worst or was it a shock . We we nt the worst or was it a shock . We went to a family party with a few people that we did not know and molly was very quiet, she hardly spoke. It was a Barbecue Party at the end of the summer and she did not say very much to anybody. That was probably the biggest clue that she gave anyone. But again, it was the sort of behaviour we had seen in other teenagers. It is so hard to pick normal behaviour from that depressive behaviour. In a moment, i will bring in our speakerfrom depressive behaviour. In a moment, i will bring in our speaker from the royal of psychiatrists. will bring in our speaker from the royal of psychiatrists. I want to show you and reduce instagram posts we found just this weekend. This is in spite of your incredible campaigning, going to speak to instagram and their promise that they are taking down, as they put it, they have removed graphic images of self harm. But they cannot find all of it, they are making progress. The first one, im going to read it to you. It is too graphic to show. Let me give you a warning, if you are if you are at home with younger children and you think this is not appropriate for them, turn away. I have children myself, just giving you that warning. Let me read you this, i want your reaction as 13 year olds. Ive checked with your pa rents. 13 year olds. Ive checked with your parents. It says, i miss cutting. I miss my razor blades. I miss the blood. Im sorry. You thought i was over it but honestly, ijust miss it. How do you respond to that . That isa it. How do you respond to that . That is a lot to process. It is a lot. If you came across that, even if you we re you came across that, even if you were not looking for it, it is like, wow. Were not looking for it, it is like, wow. The idea that heals people . They think that heals people. I think they made it a problem so there i think they think they made it a problem so therefore they deserve to be punished. Is that pretty harmful and sinister . M seems to me, as someone who pretty harmful and sinister . M seems to me, as someone who does not fully understand self harming, that it is potentially sinister and harmful. I think you have to better understand the reasons behind that kind of behaviour. They do it out of a lead and they continue to do it for the need and we need to fully understand the reasons behind self harm. Understand the reasons behind selfharm. Let me show you the next one, ifi selfharm. Let me show you the next one, if i may. The voice in my mind when i am in pain. You can see the word cut repeated. How would you respond to that . It looks like it is only a word but it has so much power behind it, especially when used in that context. It is like, that is so. That context. It is like, that is so. If you are already thinking about this kind of thing, and you see other people thinking the same thing is you, if you are relating to it, and you go, me too, i guess . It is subliminal. You dont even think about it. Ian, what do you think of that . It is a great example of something where if you are exposed to that kind of content time and again, it becomes normal. Cutting is not something that is abnormal any more. And if you are trying and struggling, and trying to stop cutting and find help, itjust discourages that quest. It is more likely that you will give up and continue cutting, i think. Likely that you will give up and continue cutting, ithink. Im likely that you will give up and continue cutting, i think. Im going to sh