One Friday in early October last year, a New Zealand teenager spent some of the day with a friend—during which they'd done some Bible study—before returning home to play backyard volleyball with his sister, with whom he had a close relationship.
He later walked across the road to the beach, where his father had been walking the dog, and offered to take it further while his father went home.
Hours later, and likely before any search for him had begun, he was dead.
The coroner who conducted the inquest, Michael Robb, imposed stringent restrictions on reporting the incident.
The Epoch Times cannot tell you in which small town the teenager lived, his exact age, other details that might identify him, or the precise manner of his death, which Robb found was self-inflicted but did not declare it a suicide because of doubt that this was ever the intention.
Investigations after the boy’s death revealed he was “future-focused and in good spirits” and was looking forward to a forthcoming holiday. His schooling was unremarkable, though he seemed happy. His doctor reported no mood, behavioural, mental health, or self-harm concerns.
The coroner also described “an obsessive personality” coupled with “thinking he was invincible,” which would lead him to “often engage in dangerous play.
Troubling Search History
But what brought about his death that day was linked to something a small, but increasing, number of young people are doing: accessing violent sexual material online.Noting that revelations about his Internet searches would be “decidedly troubling for his family to have learnt about,” Robb said he included them “only because they point to [the teenager] having somehow spiralled into searches of dark material that may have impacted on his actions that brought about his death.”
Police had identified multiple searches for pornography “in connection with various acts of bondage or violence, extending to torture and death” over the previous month, “with searches each day and multiple searches on some days,” the coroner said in his report.
While he had deleted his previous browser history, an analysis of his YouTube viewing history revealed he had been watching related material—from movies and executions from war scenes—over the past three years.
The coroner determined on the balance of probabilities that the boy intended in some way to mirror what he had seen on the internet, which, coupled with curiosity and experimentation, led to him unintentionally ending his life.
“I find there is a direct correlation between the actions that he took, which resulted in his death, and the nature of his Internet searches,” the coroner concluded.Restrictions for Youth Access to Internet Recommended
The inquest report contains several recommendations, most of which concern restricting young people’s access to the Internet.Noting that Australia had recently introduced a law banning under-16s from several social media sites and that a private member’s bill aiming for similar restrictions has been introduced in New Zealand.
Robb acknowledged that legislation that “purports to help protect young people from bullying, inappropriate content and social media addiction, [which are] important matters,” but noted that the material viewed in this case was not on any social media platform but rather the open Internet “that is available to any person, child or adult, who has access to any Internet-enabled device.”
Therefore, the teenager’s death highlighted the need for access restrictions to be applied more broadly, anywhere “a youth might access the Internet,” Robb said.
“While residential modems can have ‘parental controls’ in place restricting access to certain websites or search parameters, locations where there is publicly accessible Wi-Fi (such as cafés, public transport, libraries, et cetera) do not all have similar controls in place.”
Parents needed to ensure that third-party controls were installed on their children’s devices, and schools needed to ensure they knew how by “[engaging] in education to ensure Internet search capabilities are restricted where possible, at home [and] in respect of the ways in which a device with ... access to the Internet, can have access limitations imposed.”
While acknowledging that it is “difficult to imagine what the potential harms are, what might be searched, what might spark interest in the young,” the coroner said the teenager’s “avoidable death represents an example of the dangers of open Internet access.”
