My sister was found dead. Then I discovered her search history – and the online world that had gripped her | Internet safety

ADaily Zennib Walton knew that there was something wrong when she stumbled from her caravan in the forest in New at 8 am – she was clouding with her boyfriend – and through her sleeping fog, she saw her parents’ car driving towards her. Initially, it was upset with the idea of ​​family walking early today, I noticed that the car was deviating from the path, and as she approached, her mother seemed “hysterical”. “Immediately,” she says. “I was like,” it’s Amy. “

Amy, the sister of Walton, was twenty years old and suffered from twice the mental health for several months. She loved music and art technology-her subjective self-image, swinging the walls of the family home in Southampton, where she left her bedroom just as it was before her death. She was a fan of singer Farrell Williams, who he described five times to dance on stage at his concerts. But with the deterioration of its mental health, it has become more difficult and difficult. “We didn’t know where it was, what she was doing,” says Walton.

In the new forest, in that morning in October 2022, Walton discovered the terrible truth: Amy was found dead in a hotel room in Silo, Berkshire. It seems that she took her private life. In the days, weeks and months that followed, Walton and her family will learn Amy’s path The hotel was placed with the help of a complex network of online communications.

Andon25, journalists, it was collected together that Amy had spent time in a suicide forum chosen by the guardian not to name. The site was At least 50 deaths In the United Kingdom, it is now The investigation is underway By OFcom under Online safety law. According to the police who are investigating her death, Amy learned in this forum how to buy the material she killed, and how she met a man who flew from the United States to Heathrow to accompany her during her death. (He was initially accused of the help of suicide, but no other action was taken.)

Walton sits in her parents’ garden in Southampton, explaining how she came to write about what happened. Her book, Exit: The human cost of our digital worldShe is partly the story of her sister, and it is a much broader invitation to weapons to browsing the ordinary web, human beings that pass perish, and publishing social media to wake up to the damage that the digital world is largely allowed.

Vlad Nicholin Kaysley also mentioned Southampton, who died after using the same suicide forum used by Amy; Earlier this month, A woman was arrested On suspicion of helping suicide.

When a prior review of Emmy’s death occurs in June, Walton hopes that the factors will be brought online within the scope of the investigation, and that in the same investigation in September, “online damage” will be cited as a reason for her sister’s death.

It is only a phrase you learned. “Until we lost Amy, I did not know the meaning of” online harm “,” she says. I heard for the first time the term from Ian RussellMolly’s father, and online safety. Molly Russell She was fourteen years old when she took her life after displaying pictures and videos to harm the self, and unusually, the pathologist stated that the activity via the Internet “contributed to her death more than one minimum.” Walton hopes that the criminal investigative judge, who is investigating Amy’s death, will take a similar view, because she believes that the word “suicide” alone is the non -proportionality responsibility for Emmy, while leaving the digital world indisputable and irregular.

Initially, she described the death of her sister as “suicide” – but she says that it no longer appears to be a loyal representation of Amy’s demise. Because if suicide is a self -directed behavior, then the person can judge that he is self -directed when acting under the influence of a purposeful online community? Does a person really choose freely, Walton wonders, when the algorithms, which continued to show the content of the self -harm, and the operation of the circle of attention and exposure? “This is where I have difficulty in calling suicide,” says Walton. “My feeling is that Aimee was prepared to make a decision.”

She has transformed erasing of emerging illiteracy on these ideas and ton to a activist – working with her Thrill families for safety online He is an ambassador for youth People in exchange for large technology. “We need to name and fight the problem,” she says. “Otherwise, it feeds the feeling that it is an individual responsibility to keep ourselves safe online.”

Walton says that the police stated that the man who was with Amy at the hotel shared a room with her for 11 days before her death. While the room is filled with Emmy’s notes, which were written on such a distress, Walton says, it is not readable, the police later told that he was “working.” Walton says her lawyer told her that, while the man contacted the number 999 after Emmy took the toxic article, he rejected the CPR performance instructions. Then there was a toxic material, which is said to have obtained from Kenneth of the lawCanadian citizen was Associated with 88 deaths in the United KingdomAnd that is under investigation by the National Crime Agency.

The same forum was established by two men, according to an investigation into the New York Times, who run a number of web sites for “Incels”. The desire to restore her last sister’s steps, visited Walton the forum by herself. “Many publications say mainly,” Your family does not care about you, “you must do that.” It is a phrase they use. “

Walton believes that what is happening in the forum “is a kind of extremism to a great work that people may not think.” She is inhabited by the possibility that the man who was with Amy when she died “lived in a sick imagination as a young man who wants to see a young and vulnerable woman in her life.”

Before Amy’s death, Walton felt neutral towards technology. But now, she believes that “the digital world is a distorted distortion of our world that is not connected to the Internet, which intensifies its faults and increases its dangers.” Walton’s consideration of victims of the online damage in her book ranges widely – Archie BattersbeeAnd that arrived at Tiktok on the day he suffered from a brain injury, to Meareg Amare AbrhaUniversity professor in Ethiopia was killed after inciting posts on Facebook. It also considers the Amazon workers who sought the union in a battle to improve wages and conditions, as well as “Tony”, her 90 -year -old neighbor who suffered from digital exclusion and that taught Walton to use a smartphone.

“For a long time, this interface of technology was equal to progress, and technology is equal to innovation. This is what I really want the book to challenge,” she says. She hopes to install Trump “where Men technology [Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk] It was lined up, and it was a transformation of people in realizing the extent of these energy networks. “

However, sometimes, she says she feels the digital equivalent of the climate world in the 1970s. She is the first to admit that her relationship with technology is complicated – as Amy was. Her first memories of her playing together about the family computer in their parents’ bedroom.

“There is a video of us playing, between the ages of one and three-trickeliks and the infiltrated egg thief. A colorful game. We used to play it again and again … We grew up in playing Stardoll, Club Penguin, The Sims and Farmville. All prominent childhood memories with the digital technology in which Aimee is involved.” “Whether Xbox, Nintendo, Computer … We used to have pictures on” Digicam “from the age of eight. Just for fun!”

Walton says, in some sense, she leads a “dual life”. It is clear that her book made her question her habits. She lived in a tracking suit while writing, but nothing of it Instagram Participations about the project show this. Use an application to help her reduce her screen time. It is published on Tikhak About the exit. Then again, video calls enabled her family to “collectively sad” after her sister’s death – many of her relatives live in Türkiye.

Make promoting the book it is difficult to stay in a non -connection mode. “I am hypocritical!” “The time of my screen this week is nine and a half hours.” day? “It is disgusting,” she says. “I am usually six hours.”

In any case, she says: “I do not want to show myself as perfect, like,” I got everything under control, guys. “Because I am trying every day again. We are facing a false system to take our attention.”

In the book, Walton wrote that “the campaign enables the survivors to regain control as it was taken from it”, and I wonder whether it was working like this for her, because the process seems exhausted. “Did you say that?” She says, I was surprised. “But, if I don’t do this, where will this anger go?

She listed what happened to Aimee to support groups, her local deputy (First Royston Smith), then Darren Pavi), to Peter Kyle, Minister of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. “When we talk about online safety, the child’s safety is often the safety of the child. I find it really important, Amy is to say, that he is not only children. We can become at risk at any time of our lives. If we only look at the safety of children, we will see a generation of 18 years and do not know how to live a safe and healthy digital life,” she says. “

“I feel that it is my duty Amy, because I hope to protect it.” Her eyes are shiny with tears that do not fall, when she says: “I do what I do out of love for her that often she did not allow me to give her. I think this is a common thing with people who are struggling with their mental health. She does not want people to know how struggling was.”

It cannot be easy to provide space for grief between writing and campaigns. “On some days, I can’t really deal with this. Or, I just need a day in bed. Because my body is attached to all emotional things … in some days I cry because I was not obliged to do this. I wish I was spending the twenties and laughing.

“But this is my anxiety: People will not behave in power unless they feel what this sadness feels. I do not wish that to anyone. But if Mark Zuckerberg, for example, a child hurts on the Internet, he will be like, my God, I need to wake up.”

Exit: The human cost of our digital world Posted by Adele Zenib Walton was published by Tables on June 5 (20 pounds). To support the guardian, ask for your copy in Guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans It can be contacted on Freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the United States, you can call or send text messages The National Life Art Article to prevent suicide In 988, chat on 988Lifeline.orgOr Home To 741741 to communicate with the crisis advisor. In Australia, crisis support service Lifeline It is 13 11 14. Other international aid lines can be found in befrrynders.org