This article references suicide.
Adele Zeynep Walton, a journalist and campaigner, had no reason to mistrust the digital world until her sister Aimee died, after being drawn into a toxic, ‘pro-suicide’ online forum. She has since devoted much of her work to raising awareness of online harm, as well as calling on people in power to do more to protect vulnerable people online.
In September, Adele spoke at Refuge UK's Tech Safety Summit – alongside Baroness Charlotte Owen and GLAMOUR's Purpose Editor, Lucy Morgan – about the need for society, designers, tech platforms, and legislators to prioritise people's safety over profits.
Here, she shares what she's learned from her campaigning journey so far…
“I’ve been immersed in the digital world ever since I can remember,” says Adele Zeynep Walton, ahead of Refuge's Tech Safety Summit in September earlier this year. “Some of my fondest memories as a child involve playing with my sister Aimee on our digital devices, from PS1 to Nintendo Wii, to Xbox 360.
“Until 2022, I had a fairly optimistic view of social media platforms and their impacts on society.”
In 2022, Adele's sister Aimee died. “Like most 21-year-olds today, my sister Aimee grew up spending a huge part of her life online,” Adele reflects. “Her love for the music of Pharrell Williams, N.E.R.D and her vast collection of rare merch meant she delved into a part of the internet reserved for superfans like her.”
Aimee initially found “connections and community” online, but that changed when she started struggling with her mental health. “She became drawn into online spaces that isolated her,” Adele explains, including a “toxic forum that encourages and assists people in taking their lives.”
According to Adele, the police informed her family that Aimee had taken her own life, using a poison promoted and sold on a pro-suicide forum. In 2023, the BBC reported that the forum, which Glamour is not naming, was connected to at least 50 deaths in the UK. This number is now understood to be closer to 97, according to the British National Crime Agency. It is currently under investigation by the regulator Ofcom under the Online Safety Act.
Adele is currently campaigning with other bereaved families, survivors, and the Molly Rose Foundation for the forum to be permanently banned. “We want to make sure no one else’s life is lost at the hands of this toxic site,” Adele explains. “So we’re releasing a report next month and holding an event in parliament to highlight our recommendations for the government and Ofcom.”
The stakes have never been higher in the fight for online safety.
“A police investigation informed us that Aimee had taken her life, using a poison promoted and sold on a pro-suicide forum, bought from a man named Kenneth Law, who has been linked to 88 deaths in the UK,” says Adele. Law is currently facing separate murder charges in Canada, where he has been in custody for the past two years. He has denied reports that he was willingly selling products to help people die by suicide. Glamour has reached out to Kenneth Law's legal team for comment.
As part of her campaigning, Adele is calling for the Department for Health and Social Care to ensure all frontline staff are trained to administer the antidote to the poison that is promoted and sold to vulnerable people on this forum. “We want stricter laws on poison regulation to prevent sinister actors from making suicide a marketplace on dark corners of the internet,” she adds.
Earlier this year, Adele released her first book, Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World, which explores how our increasingly digital world has compromised our safety.
As she tells Glamour, “After we lost Aimee, I was shocked to discover that the risk of suicide-related outcomes among teen girls who spend more than five hours a day (vs one hour a day) on social media is increased by 66%.”
She is also a founding member of Ctrl Alt Reclaim, an EU youth movement campaigning for a “ban on the addictive design that sends young people down rabbit holes of harm”, which, according to Adele, is “fuelling isolation.” Adele further cites the upcoming Digital Fairness Act in the EU, which she says could lead to “real change” and “tackle online harms at the root by forcing social media platforms to be safe by design.”
Safety by design is a vital part of keeping people safe online. As Emma Pickering, Head of Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment at Refuge, notes, “We urgently need to see a shift towards proactive safety measures being embedded in digital platforms from the outset. This includes rigorous ‘abuseability’ testing for new GenAI tools, greater transparency in algorithms and stronger accountability for tech companies.”
For Adele and many other campaigners in the online safety space, this work can be tiring and triggering. “The reason that we got into campaigning in the first place was because we’ve gone through a personal tragedy that has propelled us into fighting for a better world where people are safe and empowered,” she tells Glamour. “We have to constantly retell our trauma to new people in positions of power in the hopes that they will make decisions that can prevent them from happening again.
“Whether it’s meeting with healthcare professionals or politicians or people who work for tech companies, the reason we do this work is because we want it to lead to change.”
But change isn't happening fast enough. “Sadly, a lot of our demands fall on deaf ears because until you experience online harms personally, you don’t realise the urgency of this fight. I truly believe that if Mark Zuckerberg lost a child to online harm, he would wake up and act that same day to stop any family from going through that same pain.”
Adele continues, "While change – be it social norms or legislation – takes time, inaction is inexcusable. In the two years I’ve been campaigning, I’ve sadly met new families who’ve lost loved ones since Aimee’s death, and each time I do, I feel heartbroken that these people’s lives could have been saved.
“We need politicians to act now.”
When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year.
You can call them free on 116 123 or email them at jo@samaritans.org. Whoever you are and whatever you’re facing, they won’t judge you or tell you what to do. They’re here to listen so you don’t have to face it alone.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
After her daughter, Brianna, was murdered by two fellow pupils, Esther Ghey became a campaigner for online safety.
