'I worried for her physical safety but the online world put her in danger'
Adele Zeynep Walton's sister, Aimee, was one of 88 alleged deaths caused by Canadian national poison parcels. In her new book Logging Off, Walton calls for greater online safety to protect others
The online world is no longer a digital 'other' to our 'real life' world, when so much of our lives are spent engaging with technology, from ordering our groceries online to messaging friends. To think of scrolling away on your phone as an innocuous activity - as something to mindlessly be doing for nothing more than to pass the time - is to seriously misunderstand the harm technology is causing us.
Adele Zeynep Walton 's Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World takes a family tragedy - the death of her sister, Aimee - as a result of mental ill-health compounded by online harms and weaves together a compelling case for greater online safety controls.
The book is a landmark moment, one which makes us decide whether we, as a society, are content with the destruction the digital world is causing. The link that online harms have on the 'real-world' is clear. It's a burgeoning issue, not just for those vulnerable, but to us all.
'It's a battle we all have stakes in,' Adele writes in Logging Off. But this is not a book that tells us to remain offline, it's a manifesto for safer controls on the internet.
Adele and I met in June to discuss Logging Off, and the irony is not lost on me that it is through the digital world - a video-call - that we have this conversation.
We begin with the person at the heart of this book, Adele's sister Aimee and her passing. Aimee was a creative soul who loved music and art. She adored Pharrell Williams, and even performed on stage with him.
But during the pandemic, Aimee's mental health deteriorated. She was diagnosed with OCD, depression, and anxiety, which she struggled to come to terms with.
In a spontaneous act, she applied to a university through clearing and got a place to study. 'She had requested a quiet accommodation [from the university] because as part of her OCD she was really sensitive to sound," Adele tells me. "She was in halls, which are bad for noise.'
But Aimee dropped out of the course, as 'it was partying all night, real extreme noise and just it was really, really bad. She couldn't deal with it.'
When she returned to the family home in Southampton, her condition deteriorated into a crisis, which resulted in her being hospitalised for her own safety. Adele tells me that Aimee dropping out of university 'sent her into a spiral of feeling really confused about what she was meant to do next in her life.' Adele adds, 'she just felt really lost.'
'We didn't think the online world would put her in danger'
Her family were concerned about Aimee's wellbeing as 'she was leaving the house and not telling us who she was seeing or where she was going,' Adele says. 'We were just primarily so worried about her physical safety. And again, we didn't think that the online world would be the thing that put her most in danger.'
As it would transpire after her death, Aimee, in the months before she passed away, had been visiting a pro-suicide forum, a site in which strangers talk to other people about taking their own lives. Through this site, she procured a poison which she used to take her own life.
Aimee is believed to be one of 88 people in the UK to have received this chemical from Canadian-national Kenneth Law, who is the subject of an on-going investigation by the National Crime Agency for these deaths.
The forum, which The Mirror have taken a decision not to name, was where Aimee made contact with a man who flew into the UK from the US. This person spent 11 days with her in a hotel in Slough, Berkshire, before she died in 2022.
'His presence made our pain tenfold'
While the man was arrested on suspicion of assisting suicide, he was later released and no further action was taken. In Logging Off, Adele details that 'his presence made our pain tenfold. How could a total stranger be the last person to see her, speak to her, touch her?'
This website is now the subject of an Ofcom investigation, under the new powers of the Online Safety Act. For Adele, Ofcom's investigation into the suicide forum was come 'far too late.'
She says: 'A forum that encourages, instructs and provides the means to people to end their lives assisting suicide is illegal offline. If I had put a billboard up in the street saying: Contact me if you want this substance. That would immediately be removed and I would be arrested. But online, we're allowing it to happen every single day on an unregulated scale.'
The Online Safety Act was passed into law in August 2024, but Adele says that she is yet to see a change in the digital world. The Act, she tells me, has resulted in 'no change in my personal ecosystem online in terms of less harmful content being available, less extreme content being available.'
'Ofcom's investigation is far too late'
She adds: 'I would love to see this forum banned and not being able to be accessed to people in the UK because it poses a public health risk.' But at time of writing, this is not the case, the forum is still active, despite the on-going OFCOM investigation.
A spokesperson for OFCOM said: 'We are currently gathering and analysing evidence to determine whether a contravention has occurred… Where we identify compliance failures, we can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance.' They add that in the 'most serious cases' they can 'require Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.'
To say that a book is necessary or important is to feel as if the words are dripping in over-exaggeration, but this is not the case with Logging Off. There is no exaggeration here: this is one of the most important books I've read. The harms of the online world affects everyone - whether it's acknowledged or realised or not. This is not a problem that will cease to harm in its own time.
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