A coroner has named Meta and Snapchat as "interested persons" in the second inquest into the death of a 14-year-old boy, joining TikTok, which already held that status and has agreed to release information.
Jools Sweeney, from Cheltenham, died in April 2022. His mother, Ellen Roome, believes an online challenge went wrong, and has campaigned since for access to the data the platforms hold. Fifteen social media companies have now been asked to provide data and evidence.
What "interested person" means
The designation gives a company the right to participate in the inquest and be legally represented. It does not compel attendance or evidence. In practice it is the mechanism by which a coroner brings an organisation inside the proceedings rather than writing to it from outside — which is the difference between a request a platform may answer and a process it is part of.
Also listed are Jools’ family, Gloucestershire Police and the South Western Ambulance Service Trust.
Why there is a second inquest
The first lasted 23 minutes and recorded a narrative conclusion. The High Court quashed that finding and ordered a new hearing after senior judges heard that new evidence had emerged about the role of social media, and that a "number of lines of inquiry" had not been pursued.
Those included that Jools had been contacted by a fraudulent Instagram account operated by a crime gang shortly before his death, and that evidence from his phone indicated a "possible attempt at extortion or sextortion".
Senior Coroner Katy Skerrett said the new inquest will examine the medical cause of death, the events of the day including the emergency response, and his social media and online activity beforehand.
The law that came out of it
Roome’s campaigning produced Jools Law, introduced in April 2026. Under it, when a child dies their data is automatically preserved within five days. "There shouldn’t be another parent in my position," she said — though she added that the wider goal is unmet: "We haven’t achieved the ultimate goal, we’ve still got children being harmed and dying on social media."
Speaking outside the court, she said she was pleased the coroner was taking on more data than last time, and that TikTok’s lawyers had agreed to provide relevant material in an accessible format. That last phrase is the practical crux. Data handed over in an unusable form satisfies a request without answering it, and in a case already four and a half years old, format is not a technicality.
A resumed inquest is expected in Spring 2027 and may last up to a week — a date Roome thinks may be "a little bit ambitious".
Why this case is being watched by the platforms
Coroners’ courts are not where technology policy is usually made, but they have a power regulators often lack: they can compel the production of evidence in a specific case, about a specific person, on a fixed timetable. A disclosure made to a coroner becomes part of a public record in a way that a transparency report does not.
That is the significance of fifteen companies being asked at once. The inquest will produce, in one proceeding, a comparison of what each platform actually retained about one teenager and how readily each handed it over — which is a far more exacting account than the industry’s own published figures, and one the companies cannot write themselves.
For families elsewhere, including here, the transferable lesson is in Jools Law rather than the hearing. The obstacle Roome spent four and a half years on was not refusal so much as deletion: data that no longer existed by the time anyone thought to ask. A preservation rule measured in days is the part of this that other jurisdictions can copy cheaply.
