My son Jools was 14 years old when he died suddenly in April 2022.
There was no note. There was no offline evidence that explained why he died. No one had seen or been aware of any adverse mental health issues, and at his original inquest the coroner could not be sure that Jools was in a suicidal mood.
Ellen and her son, Jools
More than four years later, I am still trying to understand what happened to my son.
Yet one enormous part of Jools’ life was not properly explored following his death: his digital world.
Like almost every teenager, Jools had a life on his phone. Social media, messaging, gaming, searches, algorithms and online interactions are now part of children’s everyday lives.
But when a child dies unexpectedly, we still do not automatically treat their digital life in the same way we would treat evidence in the physical world.
That has to change.
The risks we cannot see
The latest suicide prevention statistics from the Molly Rose Foundation and carried out by M·E·L Research demonstrates why this matters.
Its 2026 study of 1,825 children aged 13 to 17 found that more than a third had been exposed to high-risk suicide, self-harm, depression or eating disorder content on major social media services in just the previous week.
Some children were seeing this material repeatedly. Of those who had encountered content encouraging or promoting suicide, 22% had seen it ten or more times on at least one service during that week.
The research also found that suggested content feeds were the primary source through which children encountered potentially harmful material.
Those figures should concern every parent.
We cannot assume that because a child appears happy at school, with friends or around the dinner table, we know everything that is happening in their world.
There may be another part of their life taking place on a screen that parents simply cannot see.
Why digital evidence matters after a child dies
After Jools died, I discovered how easily potentially vital digital evidence can disappear.
I believed that if there was any possibility his online world held information that could help explain his death, it should have been preserved and properly investigated.
Instead, I found myself fighting a system that simply had not caught up with the way our children live.
My campaign called for the automatic preservation of children’s online data following their death, so that potentially important evidence could not disappear while police, coroners and bereaved families tried to establish what had happened.
In 2026, after years of campaigning alongside other bereaved parents and supporters, the Government brought forward changes to the Crime and Policing legislation to introduce automatic preservation of children’s social media data following their death.
This is the change I have campaigned for under the name Jools’ Law. It is not a separate Act called Jools’ Law, but a change within the Crime and Policing legislation designed to ensure that potentially vital digital evidence is preserved before it can disappear.
For me, this has never been about assuming that social media caused a child’s death.
It is about evidence.
If we do not preserve the evidence, we may never know what role the online world did or did not play.
And if we do not know what happened, we cannot learn from it.
Four years fighting for answers
Changing the law did not give me the answers I still needed about Jools.
I therefore took the extraordinary step of going to the High Court to ask for his original inquest to be quashed.
In July 2026, two High Court judges agreed that a fresh investigation and inquest should take place.
That means Jools’ death can now be investigated again, including evidence about his digital life that was not available to the original inquest.
I never imagined when I lost my 14 year old son that more than four years later I would still be fighting simply to understand why he died.
But my fight is no longer only about Jools.
From evidence to prevention
The SPARK Report looks at attitudes, risk and knowledge around suicide prevention. Data like this is incredibly important because we cannot prevent something we do not understand.
I believe the same principle must apply to children’s digital lives.
When a child dies, we should be asking what they were seeing online, what was being recommended to them, who they were communicating with and whether there were patterns of behaviour or exposure that adults around them could never have known about.
We also need technology companies to take far greater responsibility for the environments they create for children.
Parents cannot protect their children from risks they cannot see.
And we cannot expect parents to understand complex algorithms or know what is appearing on a child’s personalised feed when even the parent sitting beside them may see something completely different on their own device.
That is why preserving and understanding digital evidence matters not only to bereaved families, but to suicide prevention.
My campaign began because I desperately wanted to understand what happened to my own son.
I cannot change what happened to Jools.
But I can fight to make sure another family does not have to spend years battling for evidence that should have been protected from the beginning.
Every child’s death should teach us something.
Every piece of evidence we preserve could help us understand what happened to one child.
And what we learn from that child could help save another.
About the author
Ellen Roome MBE is a campaigner for parental rights and child protection in the digital age. Following the death of her 14-year-old son, Jools Sweeney, in 2022, she founded Jools’ Law, which calls for the automatic preservation of deceased children’s digital accounts and a legal route for bereaved parents to access their child’s online data through the coroner. Ellen works with government, regulators and fellow campaigners to strengthen online-safety and data-access laws, driven by her determination to create a lasting legacy for Jools.
About M·E·L Research’s quarterly SPARK report
What does SPARK stand for? Suicide Prevention: Attitudes, Risk & Knowledge. Our role is not to deliver direct suicide prevention services, but to empower the organisations and individuals who do. Our mission is to equip decision-makers, campaigners, and service providers with the data they need to drive informed action and lasting impact through robust, actionable suicide prevention statistics and insights.
Conducted by M·E·L Research, SPARK is a catalyst for change, providing critical evidence that helps to shape suicide prevention strategies in the UK. Visit the SPARK webpage for further information.
Do you need support?
If you or someone you care about is experiencing an emotional or mental health crisis needing immediate attention: Reach out to the person’s GP, the GP out-of-hours service, or call NHS on 111.
If you fear for your (or someone else’s) immediate safety: Guide them to Accident and Emergency or dial 999 for immediate assistance.
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