The dad of Mia Janin, 14, who is believed to have taken her own life after being relentlessly cyber-bullied, has called for greater measures to protect children online.
Mia, a year 10 pupil at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north-west London, was found dead at her family home in Harrow on March 12, 2021. In statements given to the police, her friends said that Mia was bullied by other pupils at the school and that their friendship group was nicknamed the "suicide squad" in the months leading up to her death. They said that one of Mia's TikToks was shared to a Snapchat group chat run by male pupils at JFS, where they made fun of her.
Father Mariano Janin, who had no idea Mia was being targeted online, has urged ministers to create new laws to protect young people as he said society needs to be "more alert" to the issues facing them. In the UK, there is no specific law on bullying or cyber-bullying. People are instead punished through other legislation around harassment and malicious communications.
"I think we need to do something against bullying. We need to revise the existing legislation about bullying, try to understand and try to act, do something," Mr Janin told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. "We need to transmit to our kids values, normal values, kindness, acceptance, understanding - then we need of course some kind of legal boundaries for social media. I know there are still lots of young people suffering... in a good country, in a modern society, we shouldn't have our kids dying for this stupid matter or subject."
It comes after Esther Ghey, the mum of murdered teen Brianna, called for children under-16s to be banned from social media and have smartphones with no access to networking apps. Asked about the plan Mr Janin said: "I understand her perfectly well because that was my feeling as well at the beginning - but it is like putting the genie inside the bottle again.
"We need to learn to live with this technology. This is happening globally, it is not only in England. I'm sitting here in London, probably at the same time we have another parent doing the same in Milano, another one in San Francisco, in Buenos Aires."