Esther Ghey
The Reformer
Changing the system from inside it, principle turned into change.
Esther Ghey reads as The Reformer because she converts personal tragedy into systemic advocacy with unusual method. Refusing to channel grief into blame, she maps structural failures, absent parental controls, addictive design, gaps in research on age-appropriateness, and answers each with concrete legislative and technological remedies.
“Yeah, so Brianna was excluded from school a lot because of her behaviour around a phone. So she would refuse to put a phone away. She would be on social media or texting friends underneath under the table. She'd go to the toilet to film TikTok videos.”
“Think. Didn't feel anger. I felt it was just pure sadness and pure grief. And I think that when I was sat through the trial, I kind of felt dissociated from it. So it was like I was. Not really listening to what had happened to my child, and I think that maybe that was a way of coping.”
“Really is it really is. I don't know whether you saw it. I'm going a little bit off track now, but I don't know whether you saw after the government's announcement on BBC breakfast. It was a young girl that was asked how many hours a day at the weekend that she spends on the phone and she had nine hours.”
“Don't think they've spoken to any other brave parents, so it's like a complete lack of engagement. I think they want to just pretend that this harm isn't happening, but I think that they have a moral responsibility to ensure that their product is safe. And I think not just safe for young people, but safe for adults as well.”
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “Brianna Ghey’s mother on dangers of the internet and banning social media for under-16s”
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