Coroner Links Teen's Death to Suicide Content on TikTok
A coroner in Norfolk has found that Adriana Retyte, a 14-year-old pupil at Langley school, took her own life after viewing suicide-related videos and images on TikTok. Johanna Thompson, the Norfolk area coroner, said that her access to this material may have played a significant part in her decision. A coroner is the official who examines deaths and holds inquests, the formal hearings into how a person died.
According to the Guardian, Adriana's devices showed that she viewed a number of suicide-related videos and images on TikTok in the week before her death. She died at home in May. Concerns about her wellbeing had first been raised on 31 December 2025, when a monitoring system on her school-issued tablet alerted staff to a search.
Thompson said there was no way of knowing why Adriana acted as she did. She is preparing what is known as a prevention of future deaths report, a formal document setting out concerns that is sent to organisations able to act on them. It is due to be circulated to bodies including Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator.
Ofcom opened an investigation in June 2026 into whether TikTok was failing to meet its legal obligations to protect children from harmful content. The Molly Rose Foundation has since called on Ofcom to investigate TikTok's algorithm, the system that selects which videos a user is shown, following Adriana's death. Molly Russell, also 14, took her own life in 2017 after being served suicide and self-harm content on social media, including Instagram.
The foundation also cited a survey it carried out of 1,825 children from 21 UK schools. It found that one in three had been exposed to high-risk content about suicide, self-harm, depression or eating disorders on major social media platforms in the week before they were surveyed. Seven per cent said they had seen content that made suicidal thoughts seem normal, appealing or cool.
Ofcom's chief executive, Melanie Dawes, told MPs that large social media companies do not show a safety culture, and that trust they can clean up their services is not there.
TikTok said it enforces strict rules against content that promotes self-harm. It also said it had not yet investigated what happened with Adriana's account.
