A bereaved mum is fighting social media giants Snapchat and Meta over fears her 14-year-old son killed himself in an ‘online challenge’ gone wrong. Ellen Roome is campaigning to access accounts of her son Jools Sweeney as she believes it holds the answers as to why he took his own life.
Jools was found dead in his bedroom after taking his own life but a coroner was unable to confirm if he was in a suicidal mood before his death.
Ms Roome said Jools did a “lot of online challenges” and fears he fell victim to a ‘dark and dangerous’ one such as Blackout – linked to the deaths of dozens of young people. She has since been campaigning for “Jools’ Law” – which would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they died.
The petition, which gained 126,000 signatures, was debated in Parliament this week. And she said having access to his social media could provide the evidence needed to explain his death.
Ms Roome’s world ‘shattered’ in April 2022 when she found her son unconscious in his bedroom. Without full access to his social media data, the 48-year-old mum has no way of knowing what happened to her teenage child in the day of his death.
Ms Roome said: “He was massive on social media. He did a lot of online challenges. Harmless challenges that I thought was just fun and I wasn’t aware of some dangerous dark challenges that are on social media. If we had access to it [data] we would have had answers to why a 14-year-old decided to end his life. It is horrific – to lose a child and not understand why he decided to end his life is terrible.”
She added: “He was a happy child, always laughing, always smiling with plenty of friends. Over 500 people went to his funeral – there wasn’t anybody in his life that had concerns about him. When it happened it was completely out of the blue. I had spoken to him one hour and a half before it happened.”
Since Jools’ tragic death, Ms Roome’s mission has been to understand the circumstances that led to her son’s death. She fears he may have accessed some of the viral and dangerous challenges such as Blackout – which went viral and linked to be responsible for dozens of deaths of young children. Ms Roome said she has spent thousands in legal fees trying to get data from Jools’ accounts – however without any success.
She stated how she had meetings with TikTok and exchanged emails with Meta and Snapchat – but without a court order she said they can’t provide her information.
Asked how companies have acted after her requests for data, she said: “Awfully. They don’t seem to care. TikTok refused to give any access without court order. Meta released some things but no messages or browsing data. Snapchat wouldn’t tell me if they can release deleted messages and wouldn’t give me anything further without court order.”
TikTok explained that it no longer has watch or search history for Jools, because the law requires companies to delete people’s personal data unless it is needed for running a business. The company said there are exceptions to this law, such as if police request for data to be preserved, however it said it was not contacted by officers until 2024 when the information was no longer available. TikTok said it was not trying to prevent Ellen from getting answers.
Snapchat has enabled Ms Roome to access the messages still visible in her son’s account. But deleted messages get deleted from the company’s servers and are no longer available, with Snapchat willing to cooperate with any requests from authorities for additional data to the fullest extent possible.
Ms Roome said she did not want any other parents to go through the same thing.
“It’s never going to bring my son again so it’s never gonna make me happy,” she said. “I have spent a lot of money – it is expensive and I’m just a normal person who desperately wants answers to why my child isn’t here.”
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