Let Them Be Kids: Matilda Rosewarne’s mum to detail toll of social media to the UN in America
Matilda Rosewarne should be alive, but years of bullying and social media harassment drove her to suicide at 15. Now, her loving mum will take her plea for change to the United Nations.
Today, Bathurst mum Emma Mason will fly out to the United States to tell world leaders about the fight of her life.
Standing alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who will be there to address the United Nations, Emma will detail the devastating toll social media is having on our teenagers – and she’ll do that by sharing the heartbreaking story of her daughter, Matilda ‘Tilly’ Rosewarne.
It’s been 1312 days since her Tilly was found lifeless by her dad Murray, who was getting her little sisters ready for school on the crisp Bathurst morning of February 16 in 2022.
She was in the backyard cubbyhouse she and her sisters once played in so happily over her 15 years on Earth.
She’d googled how to do it.
Was sent cruel messages detailing how to.
Kids taunted her, telling her to do it for years before she did – and mocked her when she’d tried, and failed.
That night was her 12th attempt to end her short life after enduring seven years of relentless, ruthless and utterly reckless bullying.
The bullies finally won.
But there hasn’t been one minute of the 1312 days since, that Emma, Murray or daughters Maggie, 16, and Molly, 14, haven’t thought about, grieved, and fought for their Tilly.
And all the other Tillys.
Taking their plight to the world stage, Emma will represent The Daily Telegraph’s important Let Them Be Kids campaign, which helped push the federal government to introduce new laws banning social media access to people aged 16 and under.
A legacy for Tilly, at last.
“This is the beginning of the fight – it’s not the end of the fight, it’s not even halfway through,” Emma tells Sydney Weekend.
“We are the first country in the world to do this – and we have 1,245,644 kids aged between 13-16 – so that’s not a massive market (for social media companies) to lose in the world, right?
“But if you have more countries – particularly the EU potentially coming on board – that’s more people, that’s more money – and the only way to stop this is to hit them in their hip pocket.
“This has all gone too far because there aren’t enough safety measures in there for the most vulnerable of our world, which includes children … there will be an ongoing wave when more and more countries say this is unacceptable.”
Tilly had faced severe bullying for almost half her life – but the tipping point in her delicate mental health battle was a fake nude image that purported to be Tilly that was circulated across the tight-knit country town within minutes.
Sent by a boy at her school, thousands had seen it within the hour.
It destroyed her.
“After the conclusion of the school day, we came to understand how far the image had been spread among students in Bathurst,” Emma explains.
“By 6pm, I had called the ambulance as Tilly attempted suicide. Despite the nude image not being of Tilly, she knew that people believed … that it was her. In a small town, that was catastrophic.”
Just this month, online safety laws have been further strengthened to outlaw deepfake images, prohibiting the distribution of non-consensual, sexually explicit materials.
While it’s too late to save Tilly, it will help vulnerable teens like her.
After all she went through, Emma just wants to make her daughter proud.
And she’s proud that she’s brave enough.
Proud that she’s using her voice, her loss, her lessons, to fight for systematic change that’s needed to save our kids from the cesspit that is social media.
And raising the age from 13 to 16?
Well it’s a pretty bloody good start.
“At the first instance, I just wanted the fact that social media is unchecked to be known and that they were monetising children’s misery,” Emma says.
“They are promising the illusion of connection without actual connection. It is destroying children’s mental health.
“It was more an innate, ‘I have to tell Tilly’s story.’ Now there’s a movement for change.
“I don’t have time to create a foundation and I don’t have time to create a board and do all those things – but I do have the ability to speak, that is my skill.
“So I’ve got to use that skill and use it to be a voice for the voiceless – for the parents who are destroyed by what’s happened to their children, whether it’s ended up in their death or not.”
That’s not always easy to do, when you’re grieving.
But Emma continues to reach out to parents going through what they have, so they don’t feel as alone as she did.
Because they’re not alone. Seventy per cent of teens have had a negative experience on social media and one in three have been exposed to distressing or traumatic content, according to recent polling.
Suicide and self harm has skyrocketed in Australia, where the leading cause of death for young people aged 15-24 is suicide.
It is a generation in the fight for their lives – and Emma is making sure the world hears them.
“When I hear about someone I reach out with my name and my phone number so I can talk to parents – there’s quite a few of these women that I spend time talking to in the dark hours of different nights,” she says.
Then there’s the criminal justice system that needs urgent change.
“I’m passionate about education and social justice and the justice system and how best to address this and I feel like we are completely failing that,” the family lawyer implores.
“I work in the criminal justice system so I know how it fails. Because it’s not about punishing children, it’s about making them better and trying to help them to grow and I think we fail terribly. There’s no restitution, there’s no ‘I’m really sorry I did that.’
“And for that little kid that did that to Tilly … he was back at school the next day.”
There was no adequate investigation.
No punishment.
No accountability.
Still to this day, Emma and Murray haven’t heard from anyone involved in all the “thousands of cuts” that led to their daughter’s death.
“It’s like nailing jelly to a wall,” Emma says of coping with their loss.
“I know that people want us to be positive, but really we just hang on.
“When you have lost someone by suicide in a family it just destroys every person within the family as well as the family dynamic,” she says.
“So in our family it was always ‘Let’s go to Em’s house’ and we had all the Christmases, all the Easters, all the big events.
“We don’t do any of that now. My immediate family doesn’t want to go anywhere where it’s a reminder of what is now not there.
“Birthdays, anniversaries – it’s just trying to get through the day in a way that was very, very different to before she died.”
Even dinner time is different.
“We used to have dinner every night together and we don’t do that now, because no one can really cope with that,” Emma says.
“So I sit and have dinner with my mum who lives with us now – my dad died after Tilly died – he was really sick but he couldn’t keep fighting after that. My mum has early dementia and has come to live with me so it’s a different dynamic in the household. Usually it’s just Murray, myself and Mum that eat dinner together. The girls just don’t. Every single thing is hard.”
They couldn’t face life in Bathurst after they lost Tilly.
No one could.
So they moved to Sydney where Maggie started at a new school.
She’s currently in the middle of year 11 exams and shopping for formal dresses.
Molly tried to start fresh in year 7, but that was too hard and she’s now in her second year of distance education.
“She couldn’t cope at all,” Emma explains of her youngest daughter.
“She’s so disconnected to the reality of every other year 7 child.
“She was 11 when Tilly died … they were very close and she just never could quite understand why her sister would want to do that.
“She’s very good at making friends but not so great at keeping them, particularly when they say ‘I’m gonna kill myself if I fail this exam or if a boy doesn’t like me’.”
When people ask what it’s like helping kids through such immense loss, she describes it as having butterflies flying in all different directions.
“And I’m there with my little butterfly net, trying to keep everyone together, to keep the family together – but it’s like they’re demagnetised, or repelled.”
So how does she do it? Stay strong for them? For Tilly?
“I have no answer,” she admits.
“You’ve just got to keep going. Our world is just so very different to what it once was. It just ripped us apart. Her story is so bad, you just go – how could this have happened to one kid? This is insane, how can this be? It’s horrific.”
They’re all just getting through – Murray had a stroke last year and Emma has had heart issues since Tilly’s death – but small things help. Murray has started disability support work, helping kids who need him. And Emma can talk. So she is.
“I feel very motivated to do what I can to enact complete societal change,” she says.
“I want the whole world to change so we can protect our children.”
With the Under 16 social media ban due to start on December 10, Communications Minister Anika Wells this week released the steps platforms will have to take to ensure they are complying with the laws, or risk financial penalties of up to $49.5m. The platforms will not be able to rely on users to self-declare their ages and create layered approach to prevent minors from accessing their apps.
They’re expected to detect and deactivate or remove existing underage accounts, and put in measures to stop them from re-registering.
“It doesn’t go far enough,” Emma says of the proposed changes. She wants more, and she wants the world to follow suit.
“The government has nominated exempt platforms and so I’m really concerned about those exempt platforms.
“Let’s assume I’m a six-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old and … if you want to say ‘Which is the quickest way to kill yourself’ you can do that.
“Tilly Googled how to do it. She got messages in a psych ward about how to do it. You can do it on ChatGPT now.
“It’s astounding that we have these social media giants and large media companies that have just been completely unfettered.”
So how does Emma protect her own girls from the effects of social media?
Very poorly, she admits.
It’s almost too late for kids their age, she says sadly.
Savvy teens know how to get around restrictions, and she doesn’t trust social media platforms to do the checks.
Parents need to stop it to save the next generations.
“Even in my own household, even given these events, it’s not enough to stop them with the addiction of social media,” she says.
“But we need to save the next generation coming through and not give it to them – at the first instance, we say it’s illegal. It’s like kids drinking under 18, they’ll be kids not wearing seatbelts or kids having ciggies – but doesn’t mean you don’t have legislation to protect them.
“We have to protect our children.”
While in the United States, Emma will address world leaders and she vows to take up the fight wherever she can.
“My first thought was I’m going to have a little vomit in my mouth – and then the second thought at the same time was – what headband says UN?
“I’ve worn headbands every day for 20 years, I have 120 of them,” she laughs.
It’s good to hear her laugh. There’s no doubt it’s hard to, when you have so much to cry for.
“But it’s exciting,” she says of the trip and its potential results.
“I just hope I do Tilly proud and I hope I do the group of people that I speak for proud – and that isn’t just the Let Them Be Kids people – it’s all the parents that have had to deal with the scourge of social media. It’s all the parents of the lost children. Not just by telling Tilly’s story, but by telling our universal heartache.”
So … would Tilly be proud?
“I think on one level she’d say, ‘Oh I’m so embarrassed, don’t do it’,” Emma laughs again.
“But on another level she knew I had her back. Every time she survived and woke up again from whatever she had done, I was the person there. But that’s someone who is very determined. She couldn’t find hope.
“This is the world stage of people caring about what happens to our children, and telling Tilly’s story is just a way for them to hear the reality of what we’re trying to do in Australia, and hopefully what the rest of the world is going to turn their minds to, because what we do know is the impact of social media is just horrific for children,” she says of the UN.
“It’s damaging to their mental health, their sleep patterns, their sense of wellbeing. There is a ground swell movement of ‘whoops, we’ve f--ked up these kids, what can we do to fix it’ – but it’s a slow process.”
Despite being slow, it’s Australia leading the way in such a critical issue, thanks to campaigns like Let Them Be Kids, and people like Emma.
“I am so proud that the people in the room where it matters decided to say ‘We need to do something’,” she says.
“It is an incredible legacy that (Prime Minister) Albanese will leave this country and the world. And for me, it’s about putting pain into purpose.”
Emma may be going on her own – at home there are exams to do and formals to enjoy – but her family are in her heart, always.
“I don’t need someone to stand there with me – I might be very short but I’ve got very broad shoulders.
“I’ll be dead a long time, and whenever that final heart attack takes me out from the sheer stress of my broken heart, I will have done something – for all the little Tillys.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Let Them Be Kids: Matilda Rosewarne’s mum to detail toll of social media to the UN in America
